green getaways with V.C. Andrews

originally posted at www.thebumpideereader.blogspot.com

Escaping from NY is a common theme for many of us who live here in the city. It's wonderful to have so many places to go within just a few hours of train or driving but everything requires lots of detailed planning and can be a pain in the butt! We decided to make this weekend "green" by taking our bikes on the train to go back and forth to the beach (only 3 miles from the hotel we were at.) Yay us!

Anyway, one of the sweet not too widely known about spots is Greenwich Point Beach, easily accessible from the Old Greenwich metro north train station. Besides being a relatively quiet beach visited by mostly locals, having a decent snack bar with veggie burgers as well as your standard dogs and fried clam sandwiches, it has a lending library of books beach goers have left behind. The pickings were pretty slim but I was happy enough to stumble upon Garden Of Shadows by V.C. Andrews.

I actually never read Flowers In The Attic when I was a kid although I did see some part of a movie version at some point. It seemed creepy and I never did like the idea of confinement, preferring tales of greenery and liberty like The Secret Garden and Ballet Shoes. Garden of Shadows is a fantastic read as in, it takes 2 seconds to finish and is super creepy (incest, god, sexism) therefore entertaining, but how can it be for kids??