When nine-year-old Olivia and her five-year-old sister Nellie’s mother dies, their father sends them to live with their great-aunt Minty. This arrangement seems less than promising to Olivia, who worries about the demanding and difficult Nellie. When the girls find a beautiful blue teacup in Aunt Minty’s garden however, they are drawn into a summer-long quest to find the entire set, a necessary part of the counter-charm needed to free the Lost Flower Children, spoken of in a story Olivia has read about this very garden.

A moving story about two young girls and how they come to terms with their mother’s death, The Lost Flower Children possesses Lisle’s characteristic blend of fantasy and reality, in which the reader is never sure if the magic is real or imagined. The faintest touch of real magic at the end, another Lisle characteristic, gives emphasis to the book’s journey of imagination. ( )

Olivia and her complicated little sister Nellie have lost their mother, and their salesman father has to leave them with their Great Aunt Minty while he travels. 5 year old Nellie is coping with the loss by hedging herself around with rules and obsessive behaviours, which Olivia has to safeguard and explain. Frail old Minty gives them the run of her overgrown garden and overloaded bookshelves, but otherwise stands back.
When Minty digs up a tiny blue teacup, and Olivia finds a story of children under enchantment in a garden like their own - a story written by a former owner of the house - Nellie sets out to find all the buried cups, and free the children trapped as flowers.

Overall, this was quite good. Lisle does a good job, within a short book, of portraying children suffering loss in different ways. As an adult reader, I could see the ending coming, but it didn't feel wrenched into shape. If I'd read this as a child, I would have loved it for the setting (overgrown garden, house full of books, eccentric old lady) though I might have been disappointed that the magic wasn't overt.

Olivia is desperate and miserable. Her mother died during the winter and there's no one but her to look after and understand five-year-old Nellie. Especially now that Pop is sending them to stay with Aunt Minty. She's old and doesn't really want them - and she certainly doesn't understand Nellie's Rules, which must be followed.

Aunt Minty makes some well-intentioned but disastrous attempts to help Olivia and Nellie, but their healing doesn't really begin until Olivia finds an old book and they set out on a marvelous treasure hunt. Could the magical story of the Lost Flower Children be true? Nellie absolutely believes, but Olivia knows she's too old for magic. But maybe a little magic is just what she needs.

This story doesn't have the wrenching emotional pain of some of the contemporary middle grade books about death, such as Suzanne LaFleur's Love, Aubrey or Sally Nicholls' Ways to Live Forever, but Olivia and Nellie's grief and struggle to adjust after their mother's death is very real. Their characters are beautifully drawn and open to the reader throughout the story as we watch them grow, change, and create a new family dynamic. Like the garden, Olivia and Nellie come back to life slowly. It takes a lot of work and weeding from everyone, but the result is beautiful.

Verdict: I've read several Janet Taylor Lisle novels and found them compelling, although not what I'd normally read. I picked this one up because the cover and interior illustrations are done by Satomi Ichikawa, whom I love for her illustrations of Patricia Lee Gauch's Tanya ballet picture books. I also love anything Ichikawa does involving gardens, so this was a lovely book. Worth adding to your library, even as a paperback.

ISBN:978-0698118805; Published April 2001 (out of print); Received through Bookmooch.