"At first, I thought, 'Hell yeah!'" she says. So Potter, a Mayo resident, felt both thrilled and nervous three years ago when her editor came up with a bold idea - that she update "The Secret Garden" for a modern audience. "I've always been obsessed with that book." That's so unusual, and it fascinated me," says Potter, a children's novelist whose three-book series about a feisty preteen named Olivia Kidney gained acclaim in recent years. "At the start of that story, Mary's so sour and unlikable. There she meets an array of often-spooky characters, happens on an abandoned garden and brings it back to life. The book's heroine, 10-year-old Mary Lennox, loses her parents to a cholera outbreak and must start her life anew at a remote manor in rural England. When she was growing up, Ellen Potter was an avid reader, and nothing thrilled her more than settling down with her well-worn copy of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic 1911 children's novel, "The Secret Garden."
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