Jak teleport do dzieciństwa. Nadal piękna i wspaniale opisująca przemianę głównej bohaterki. Czytając ją współcześnie oczywiście rzucają się w oczy ksenofobiczne czy mające korzenie w epoce kolonializmu wypowiedzi bohaterów, które w okresie dzieciństwa nie były przeze mnie zauważane, ale to nadal piękna literatura, do której warto wrócić choćby z sentymentu dla książek dzieciństwa.

4 ⭐

Un classico che ti coccola!
Ho un rapporto molto contrastante con i classici quindi, a mio malgrado, ne leggo pochissimi ma questo mi ha conquistata dalla prima pagina.
La scrittura molto semplice e senza fronzoli e la storia commovente sono i punti forti di questo classico per bambini.
Il libro parla di rinascita e resilienza il tutto accompagnato da un'atmosfera magica e fatata, in cui il punto di vista dei bambini è il cardine intorno a cui ruotano gli eventi.
Nel complesso ho molto apprezzato questo romanzo e, anche se ha dei toni molto infantili, racconta i vari temi in modo adeguato.

Having read The Secret Garden as a child I really wanted to read this book as an adult to see would I still feel the magic of the story many years on. Well I felt the magic just as I did many years ago.

This is a beautiful book and so well written, it has everything a story needs to fuel the imagination of a child, a big rambling house set on the moors, a secret garden, a couple of spoilt children and a big family who value life and friendships and put others needs before theirs.

I escaped in this book and although I knew the story and the outcome I loved every page as the writing is so descriptive and the characters so well drawn that this book comes alive. I have seen the film several times of the secret garden and yet reading the book the characters and places took on a completely different image which was great as Frances Hodgson Burnett really knew how to capture her readers.

So glad I picked this book to read again, as a good story, well written never grows old.

This was one of my favorite books from childhood, and I decided to re-read it this spring after revisiting another beloved FHB work, "A Little Princess."

Like so many famous children's books, the story doesn't really get going until a child is left alone without parents. The surprising heroine of "Secret Garden" is the unlikeable Mary Lennox, who had lived in India with her rich parents until they both died of cholera, and then she was sent to live with a wealthy-and-distracted uncle in Yorkshire, England. At her uncle's manor she discovers a love for gardens, and she becomes obsessed with a mysterious story about a secret garden on the property that no one has been in for 10 years, which is when her aunt died in an accident. There are also strange noises in the house at night, and Mary becomes determined to find out the source of those odd cries.

I was a fan of the musical version of "Secret Garden" that had a good stage run back in the 1990s, and during this re-read I was struck by how the show had improved on some of the story points in the book, giving them more color and detail.

I still have my childhood copy of "Secret Garden," even though its spine is broken and there are loose pages everywhere. I'll never throw it away, and I'll probably continue to re-read it every few years when I need a quick dose of a comforting story. Oh, the power of a beloved book from childhood!

Favorite Passages
"At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one."

"Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. In India she had always been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things. Already she felt less contrary, though she did not know why."

La ricerca del proprio giardino

"Uno degli aspetti più strani della vita è che solo di tanto in tanto siamo sicuri di vivere a lungo, molto a lungo, forse per sempre."

La vita è troppo breve per serbare rancori, arrendersi, costruire dei muri intorno a sé.
"Il giardino segreto" è l'emozionante resurrezione di due personaggi, ognuno dei due colpevole per colpe altrui ed entrambi silenziosamente desiderosi di amicizia e amore, sentimenti per lungo tempo negati.
Viviamo in una società ove facciamo coincidere il nostro benessere con elementi sempre più sopra le righe ed elaborati, quando in verità è proprio nelle piccole cose che possiamo ritrovare noi stessi.
L'esaltazione della vita sgorga con naturalezza dalle parole della Burnett, la quale ci ricorda che il miglioramento del mondo parte sempre con una rinascita interiore, con l'accettazione del nostro giardino segreto.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a classic novel about healing, power of friend and nature. Mary Lennox is a young girl who was sent to live with her uncles family in Yorkshire after her parent’s death. She meets her sickly cousin by accident when she is exploring the estate looking for the source of crying. Angry, sad and withdrawn, Mary discovers a hidden garden. Colin, May and a boy Dickon work hard to bring life back to the garden. The healing properties of nature start to make Mary feel better and Colin to gain strength.

“She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.”

Our book club choice for April was ‘The Secret Garden’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

As a child, I enjoyed Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess as well as this classic story, all in abridged format, but it was so wonderful to revisit this one (in its original form) as an adult. While this story is simple enough for children to understand, it’s still relatable enough for adults to garner valuable lessons.

Our host, Melissa Gilbert, wanted her 2024 book choices to focus on “grief and fear turned on their heads by hope and magic.” Like our first book, LHITBW, this book was also written by a woman in her 60s and is a great reminder that it’s never too late to chase dreams and share stories. I loved FHB’s nod to mindfulness in the following quote:

“Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”

I was amazed at the transformation of a lonely and spoiled little girl who discovers a hidden garden and befriends a local boy and her sickly cousin. In inviting readers to cultivate their own transformation, Burnett also highlighted:

✔️the restorative power of nature and friendship
✔️the importance of environment and attitude in our healing journey
✔️the benefit of finding joy and purpose in caring for something outside of ourselves

I was reminded that although we may feel locked up, over-grown and abandoned, if we dig in, make room, prune, water, weed and feed our soul with life-tending magic….anything can happen!

I cried when she was gifted the skipping rope and smiled at the alternative name for daffodils, ‘Daffydowndillys.’ I loved the focus on intergenerational and inter-social class friendships.

This book about healing, rebirth and second chances is one I’m glad I read as an adult!

*the book club meeting was made even more special by a guest who shared from her heart- the great-great-granddaughter of the author!

Ο Μυστικός κήπος είναι ένα όμορφο παραμύθι, αλλά και πολλά περισσότερα από αυτό. Είναι μια αλληγορική ιστορία που μιλάει για την ψυχή, που όταν της δίνεις ήλιο, νερό, την αγαπάς, ανθίζει σαν τις τριανταφυλλιές του μυστικού κήπου. Τι μπορεί να θέλει ο άνθρωπος περισσότερο από αγάπη;
Μια ιστορία που πρέπει να είναι μέσα στα πρώτα 5 βιβλία που δίνουμε στα παιδιά μας να διαβάσουν.

A favorite from grade school era.

Note: On 12-19-2019 received this B&N leather-bound copy for my permanent collection of all-time favorite books. (Christmas came a little bit early this year)

“Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way - or always to have it.”

As a child, I read this book at least four or five times, along with Frances Hodgson Burnett's other childhood stories about Sarah Crewe (Little Princess) and Cedric (Lord Fauntleroy). They represented a rite of passage for me as a person and as a reader. There is magic involved in coming-of-age stories where children strive to find the kind of life they are meant to live, against all odds, and I felt deeply satisfied each time I closed one of those books, knowing that the protagonists had (once again) made it through various challenges to live a better, more natural and fulfilled life.

So far, so good.

Some childhood classics are better left alone later, signifying a certain phase that can only be "demystified" by rereading, leading to bitter disappointment and loss of the initial enchantment. I hadn't touched The Secret Garden for decades, as I feared the slightly exaggerated, dramatised plot might put me off, and destroy the magic of my memory.

But then I happened to discuss a phenomenon among students in a wealthy, over-privileged area. Many children and teenagers appear phlegmatic, angry, frustrated, lacking initiative to learn and develop, and they demand unreasonable attention without showing any willingness to commit to tasks themselves. We could not make sense of it, seeing that these students had "everything they needed, and more", and met with no restrictions or boundaries from their parents. Shouldn't they be happy? But they aren't. They are among the most neurotic, anxious children I have ever met.

That's when The Secret Garden came to my mind again, - an early case study of childhood neglect in wealthy environments, in which children's physical and material needs are met, but their psychological development is completely left untouched. In The Secret Garden, it is the poor, but well-raised and deeply loved local boy who shows the spoiled, unhappy upper class children how to take on a responsible role for their life, and how to make active and positive decisions rather than throwing fits to let others step in and take over.

Children need boundaries, and nurturing, and meaningful connections to their surroundings. If they are treated with fear and submission, they will turn into tyrants to see how far they can go before they receive some kind of direct attention, negative or positive. If they are handled with too much severity, they will duck and hide, and develop chameleon-like survival strategies. To create a happy, mature, and responsible human being, a balance between rights and duties must be struck, with limits the child knows it cannot overstep without facing consequences, and with areas of creative experimentation, where future freedom of choice can be safely practised.

Just like a flower in a garden, a child needs both space, time and air, and a lot of nurturing, to blossom. I am grateful for the connection I found between my childhood reading pleasure and the everyday worries I face in my profession. A smile, a word of encouragement, a nudge in the right direction, all the small signs that show students that their teachers believe in their power to achieve great things - that's the magic of everyday life. And giving in to their tantrums is not helping those sensitive plants grow. It is stifling their development.

When they claim they are too "tired" or "bored" to read The Secret Garden, and prefer to watch a movie version (if at all), they are in more dire need of overcoming the obstacle of long-term under-stimulation than the protagonists of the story itself. They need to be trained to love reading just like the two unhappy children in the mansion needed to be trained to show interest and care for the garden.

Responsibility and care are acquired skills!

I admit I was charmed by this children's classic. It started out promising as the beginning of a great tragedy with a monstrous girl-child but thanks to a garden, an evil-looking gardener, and a magical robin, we learn that children OUGHT to run about unsupervised outside and get fattened up for the slaughter.

ALTERNATE VERSION OF THE CLASSIC:

The two kids, now happy and well-adjusted and delightful instead of being wailing banshees now have ruddy cheeks and (as we have been told by the author MANY TIMES) they're fattened-up.

In comes Hitchcockian Robins to feast on whatever has been left in the Secret Garden. No one will ever find their remains. :)


Ahh, alas, modern sensibilities. :) But no, nothing like that happens. It's actually rather delightful and maybe in a year or two I'll be reading this wonderful book to my girl.

I may or may not embellish a bit, tho. :)

I guess I didn't miss much by not reading this book as a child. I don't really understand why it became a classic. It starts out interestingly enough with a very gothic setting. A little British girl named Mary survives a cholera epidemic in India and is sent to Yorkshire to live with her distant relatives. The author gives a vivid description of the beauty of the moors and the mysterious mansion that the girl goes to live in. The only other interesting part is really when Mary discovers the boy who she hears crying in the mansion and when she discovers the secret garden. Everything else beyond that (which is most of the book) isn't all that interesting. The author spends many pages explaining how miraculous and magic fresh air is for healing and fattening up the crying boy and the girl who escaped the cholera epidemic in India.

The bits that get old after a while: Oh, look, it's a garden! Look, I can run and play! I'm not a cripple after all! Look at the pretty birds! The garden is alive! Now I have an appetite! Isn't it a magical miracle that I'm having fun playing outside?

I just wasn't really impressed.