The Secret Garden! The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden by Karen Yan Glaser

Laney's mind was bursting with ideas for the garden. "It's our secret project," Jessie and Oliver coached Laney as they walked back to gather their money so they could head to the garden store.

"Do you think it's okay if we go in there even though Mr. Huxley said not to?" Hyacinth asked.

"Mr. Huxley never specifically said we couldn't," Jessie clarified. "He just said things about liability and not wanting the church to get sued. Look," said Jessie, "if it makes you feel better, I'll write up a liability release form when we get home."

They filed into their brownstone. Mama was on the phone, saying things about "ambulance costs" and "preexisting conditions." Mama gave Jessie money for lunch at Castleman's since she hadn't had time for grocery shopping. Laney couldn't believe the luck! A garden discovery, a trip to the garden store, and now Castleman's!

The Vanderbeeker's summer has not been what they had expected. Jessie's twin Isa is off at music camp, so they are short one Vanderbeeker; Mr. Beiderman, their landlord and reigning grouchy top-floor neighbor, had reverted to being a total recluse and living on cans of Spam, much to their nutrition-obsessed mother's distress; and then Mr. Jeet, their adopted grandfather figure upstairs, had had a stroke. He was very sick, and Miss Josie was staying around the clock at the hospital with him.

So when the Vanderbeekers discover a ivy-covered entry door to a walled plot next to the local church and big brother Oliver cracks the combination on the lock, they decide to turn the weed-and-trash-filled area (complete with abandoned toilet) into a beautiful garden to lift Mr. Jeet's and Miss Josie's spirits when he is discharged from the hospital. Pooling their savings to buy tools and plants, they spend days cleaning up the hidden plot. Oliver recruits his friend Angie, and Hyacinth even enlists the help of Oliver's nemesis, Herman Huckley, with whom she shares a mania for knitting. They discover what seem to be "abandoned" bags of garden soil in a corner their brownstone's backyard, and haul them for blocks to begin planting everything they can afford in their secret garden.

All goes well at first. Mr. Jeet is scheduled for discharge and the plantings are all in and thriving, when Herman's father discovers their secret garden. The Vanderbeekers are dismayed when they learn from Mr. Huxley that the plot has just been sold to make room for an upscale condominium development. Desperate to save their garden, they turn for help to, who else, Mr. Beiderman.

The lively and adventurous Vanderbeekers of South Queens/Harlem are back, in Karen Yan Glaser's second book in series, The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018). Glaser again portrays a close-knit family and their close urban neighborhood in a summer adventure for the whole clan, as they again show that "It takes a village." In the style of Ramona Quimby's "good sticking-together family" and a neighborhood of friends and sometimes rivals, the Vanderbeekers are a welcome return to the middle-grade family fiction genre of Eleanor Estes' The Moffats, the Quimbys and the Hugginses of Henry and Beezus (Henry Huggins), and Jeanne Birdsall's more contemporary The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy (see review here)--albeit one set in the times of gentrification and smartphones as well as warm cookies, beloved neighbors, and kids who undertake big ideas with a true sense of "agency." As Kirkus Reviews adds, "With refreshing and realistic attention to socio-economics at work, [it is] perfect for individual reading while tucked away in a treehouse or as a family read-aloud."