The Secret Garden is a tale of Mary Lennox, an orphaned girl around the age of ten, who is sent to live at Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire, England with her uncle Mr. Craven after her parents die of a cholera breakout in India. Known as Mistress Mary Quite Contrary when she arrives in England, Mary soon finds an appreciation for the moorland and gardens. Dickon, the brother of Martha who is one of the manor’s servants, being savvy with nature, helps her grow the garden. When she meets her cousin, Colin, who believes he is an invalid who will die young, she tells him about entering the locked and therefore secret garden, which used to belong to his dead mother.
My thought
Mary Lennox is a cold heartless spoiled girl raised in India without a mother. Her whole family dies so she moves to Yorkshire England to live with her uncle Archibald Craven. When she gets there she meets Martha, a poor Yorkshire girl. Martha is surprised at how little Mary is and tells Mary to play outside. Mary finds out about a garden that no one had been in for ten years, and is immensely curious about it. Soon the moor air changes her, and she becomes healthy and cheerful. She finds a key and eventually finds the door to the Secret Garden, hidden behind some ivy. She enters it and loves it immediately. She asks Martha if her brother, Dickon, will give her some seeds and gardening tools, which reveals to him the secret too, and they work on it together. Later on she meets Colin, a fretful, ill boy who is the son of Archibald Craven. He believes he shall die, but Mary is determined to convince him otherwise. She shows him the garden, and they hatch a secret plan to make him walk and be healthy. He exercises every day and works in the garden, while the staff remains puzzled and confused. (He pretends to be ill while in the house, but they can clearly see he's not.) When the boy's father comes home and sees him healthy and strong, he is overjoyed.
The book had been written in 1911. It was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The book became very popular and was made into a movie. It is classified as a classic, but is not the “talk of the town” of classics.
I think that this book was one of the best books that I have ever read. It dragged me in from the minute that I started reading it. It was such a moving and amazing book. It had a lot of things that made it very good.
The writing style of the book was very well. Many of the people in the book had a Yorkshire accent. The author was able to write words as if they were said in the accent. He did a very good job at it. He also did a very good job at making Mary in the beginning of the book spoiled. Here is an example of this. “Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!” (kindle location 58 of 2995). She had said this to one of her servants. In India, it was very bad to be called a pig. The author was able to make her sound like an incredibly spoiled brat. The author was also able to make the book very easy to read. What I mean by this is that the author was able to write the book so that I wasn’t confusing. I have read many books. Some of them were hard to follow because they did not flow very well. This book was not one of those. This book was very simple to understand. I understood every part of it. Over all, the writing style was amazing. There are not many books that have a writing style like this.
The book also had many great lessons to learn from it. One of them is that you should never give up on yourself. Colin was going to give up on himself from getting better, but Mary was able to show him that there was hope. Another theme is not to believe what other people negatively think of you. Rumors were spread about Colin saying that he was a “cripple”. This was not true though. Colin was hurt when people said that, but he knew that his legs were perfectly fine. I believe that these are both very good themes of this book. These themes also made the book very good.
Overall, the book was amazing. I would rate it a 5 out of 5. I wanted to read this book because I had seen the movie. Because I saw the movie, it made me think if the book was just as good as the movie. It was very much the same! I think that many other people should read this book. I think that they would be very satisfied.
Summary
This book is an intriguing novel about a young girl whose life drastically changes. She comes to find mysterious places that have hidden unknown secrets. This book is a novel about self discovery.
Reading level
I Enjoyed it very much...a touching story from one of my favorite time periods with a very positive timeless message regarding the power of positive thinking...contrast with more adult current books...It is a must for every young persons reading list...and some older people like me....:-)
Rating 5 stars
