Meg Rosoff

Oh, I'm so happy to be here, or almost here, halfway around the world here.

Well, yes, it's funny.

I hadn't thought magician exactly, but I did think circus.

And The Great Garden, to me, did sound a bit like a circus MC.

And although that's not the main thrust of the book in any way, and in fact, the name probably came more from...

the great gatsby which is very presumptuous of me obviously but you know when you're thinking of titles you're looking at sort of certain resonances and and yes kit garden is a bit of a magician and a bit of a showman

I...

Listen, I spent my childhood, I grew up outside of Boston in the US, and I spent my childhood on Martha's Vineyard, which I don't know if Australians have heard of it, but nowadays it's considered a kind of playground of the rich and famous.

But back in 1960, when my family first started going there, it was just this kind of scruffy, unknown, funny little backwater.

And

my three sisters and I were just running wild there all the time.

And it was such an important part of my life.

It was sort of the formative moments.

It seems as if all the formative moments of my life virtually until I went off to university took place during those summers.

And as I grew older and there were

you know, occasional boyfriends and things like that.

That was all happening during the summer.

And then even when I was in my 20s, I would bring, you know, friends and boyfriends and people to the house there.

So there was this sense of a kind of magical place.

And then I moved to England permanently in 1989.