Remixed Classics Books in Order

Remixed Classics is not a single ongoing plot. It is a shared young adult series where contemporary authors revisit well known older books and rebuild them from angles the original canon often pushed aside. That means you can pick up any entry on its own. The common thread is not recurring characters. It is the idea that classic stories can be questioned, re-centered, and made to speak to new readers.

Cherie Dimaline's contribution is Into the Bright Open, a reimagining of The Secret Garden. She moves the story to 1901 Georgian Bay and keeps the bones of the setup, an orphaned girl, a remote household, a hidden garden, family secrets, but changes the emotional center and the power dynamics. Mary arrives guarded and sharp, expecting another cold house. What she finds is a place shaped by class, race, silence, and a history she does not yet understand.

This one grows by opening doors.

The key relationships are what make Dimaline's remix work. Mary becomes close to Olive, the cousin hidden away in an attic room and treated as fragile. She also meets Sophie, a lively Métis girl who helps her see the land, the household, and herself differently. Their friendships, and the feelings that develop around them, turn the story into more than a mystery about a locked garden. It becomes a book about who gets listened to, who gets hidden, and who is allowed to belong.

Setting matters here in a big way. Dimaline roots the novel in Georgian Bay, and the landscape is more than atmosphere. The wildness outside the house gives the girls room to breathe, explore, and imagine a different future. At the same time, the house itself carries the tight rules of a colonial world, with servants expected to know their place and certain identities treated as problems to be managed. That contrast gives the book its tension. It feels gothic in places, but it is also warm, curious, and hopeful.

You do not need to know The Secret Garden to enjoy Into the Bright Open. In fact, one of the nice things about Remixed Classics is that each book stands alone. If you do know the original, part of the fun is seeing what gets kept, what gets challenged, and what gets replaced. Dimaline is especially interested in pushing back on the racism, rigid gender roles, and easy assumptions that shaped so many older children's classics.

So while Remixed Classics is a wider multi-author project, Dimaline's entry has its own clear identity. It reads like historical young adult fiction with family secrets, a queer coming of age thread, a vivid sense of place, and a gentle but firm argument about who deserves to be at the center of the story. If you like retellings that honor the old scaffold while building something new on it, this is the kind of series to browse, and this is one of its more grounded, thoughtful stops.