Peter Sieruta at Collecting Children’s Books writes about The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder in which “Robin, the middle child in a large migrant family finds her special place in the tower room library of an otherwise abandoned estate. On the bookshelves, Robin discovers an old diary that helps her unravel the mystery of the estate’s long-missing heir.”

I started thinking about other books for children in which the protagonist finds a secret place where he or she can read and think and imagine and play pretend and grow.

Mandy by Julie Edwards. Mandy finds an abandoned cottage where she can make a pretend home of her own, but will keeping her secret make her lose the friendship and love of those who care about her?

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Mary, a spoiled orphan child raised in India, finds both solace and friendship in a secret garden on her aunt’s estate. The little girls have been listening to the Focus on the Family radio drama production of this classic, and I’ve enjoyed rediscovering it along with them.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. Jesse and Leslie create a secret kingdom in the woods where they fight off enemies and crown themselvs king and queen of Terabithia.

In Patricia St. John’s Rainbow Garden, Elaine is sent to live with a family in the English countryside while her mother goes to work in France. Elaine is selfish and bitter, but she experiences healing and forgiveness in her garden.

The View From the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts. Rob Mallory has his own secret hiding place in the cherry tree, but spying on the neighbors from the branches of the cherry tree turns out to be a dangerous occupation.

Jean Craighead George wrote My Side of the Mountain in which Sam Gribley runs away to the Catskill Mountains and builds himself a secret home inside an old tree.

In their very first adventure The Boxcar Children (Gertrude Chandler Warner) find an old deserted boxcar where they make their home. This part of the story was most intriguing to me as a little girl: how do you make a home out of found objects out in the woods, no money or very little, lots of ingenuity?

Of course, the Magic Treehouse kids have . . . well, a Magic Treehouse.

Now that I think about it these are only the books in which the “secret place” itself is a central issue in the story; lots of other characters in children’s books have their own special places to get away from the fray:
Huckleberry Finn has an island and later his raft.

Tom Sawyer had a cave.

The Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett), Sara Crewe, had her own attic room.

Betsy-Bee reminds me that the girls in Ursula Nordstrom’s The Secret Language not only had a secret language; they also had a fort with a little swimming pool inside (?).

I’ve always been quite fond of nooks and clubhouses and secret hiding places in books and in real life. What others can you think of?