Cheap The Secret Garden (Book) (Frances Hodgson Burnett, Tasha Tudor) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Secret Garden

CLASSICS CAN BE FUN!
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>I have always thought that classics were such a bore. Reading Walt Whitman or Shakespeare made me yawn. But "The Secret Garden" was different, because it had a lot of depth to its very Romantic plot and even now, we can relate to and analyze this from various points of view. <
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>What I found the most thrilling in the novel was Mary's transformation from an angry little girl to a beautiful lady with a beautiful mind. This has close ties with Marxism, the struggle to distribute power between classes. When Mary was in India, hidden from the rest of the rich family, she was called "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary." She was always so cross, and nothing could satisfy her. She always whined, and even her dearest servant Ayah's absolute submission could not please Mary. However, due to a tragic epidemic that kills pretty much everyone in her Indian home, she is sent to Uncle Craven's house in England. This is the point when she learns to play outdoors, respect servants and becomes healthier. <
>Not only does her transformation end there, but she also spreads the happiness that optimism brings by approaching Colin, a sick heir of the house. He is hidden in a small room in the enormous mansion, because Uncle Craven thinks Colin will grow up to be a hunchback. Mary proves everyone wrong, and makes Colin healthy by making him run around the secret garden. <
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>The Garden's transformation is also remarkable. It was initially abandoned after Uncle Craven's wife died and Mary works on the garden to make it alive again, with the help of Dickon, a servant at the mansion. As the garden blooms again, Colin's body recuperates and becomes healthy again. <
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>This Romantic story is well-supported and gives us insights into high much our environment can influence our lives. I strongly recommend this book: it will never bore you.

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A taste of home
I've always been in love with this book. There's so much aliveness to the writing, so much feeling and yet simplicity. As an adult, I can come back to this one and thoroughly enjoy it, feel the darkness of the house where our heroine is taken, so different form her life in India. It's a book about another time, wistful, sad, and realistic. <
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>I particularly like the descriptions of Yorkshire - how it can be both grim and beautiful, dark and light. Coming from there, I know it well, and I can't help thinking that the reason I like the desert here so much is that it has the same bleakness and emptiness as the Yorkshire moors. <
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>The characters are alive, well made, and have their quirks. They eventually get over themselves and find a new joy in the secret garden. Not many children's books deal with depression in adults (the bereaved father) and there's just enough to make you think. Or at least I did.

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I Remember Fondly...
...The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read it so long ago that I had to look up the author's name. Perhaps when I read it I was not yet in the habit of paying attention to the names of authors. Back in the third grade I thought what folly it was to be required to memorize one more inconsequential fact when a teacher insisted that the writer's name be included in a book review. <
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> I also remember loving the Cinderella quality of this little girl-protagonist's life (and girl-protagonists were not so easy to find in those days--NANCY DREW and LITTLE WOMEN are about the only ones that come to mind but there must have been others!) <
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> Never-the-less, the garden itself was the star for me. I still think of bulbs--I seem to remember they were tulip bulbs--as magical because of this novel. <
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> My mother remembered SECRET GARDEN from when she was a child (she is now 87) and "swiped" it from me when I brought it home. Perhaps that I was deprived of it for days until she finished makes it all the more memorable for me. At any rate, I plan to read it this summer. Judging from the way my mother devoured it, it must indeed be a very good read for adults as well as children. <
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>Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of other memory inducing books including THIS IS THE PLACE, HARKENING, and a chapbook book of poems, TRACINGS, coming in the fall of 2005. <
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