Beautiful

This is a Children's classic book. I love the story. This review is hard to write because I love the story, the characters in this book, and the plot of this book, but I did not love the audiobook. The narrator of the audiobook was good, but my big problem with this audiobook is all the sound effects and music in the audiobook. There is times in the audiobook you cannot hear the narrator because of the music or sound effects. I think the audiobook could be so much better without the music all together and less sound effects (or the sound effects be lower). I was kindly provided an e-audiobook of this book by the publisher (Harper Audio) or author (Frances Hodgson Burnett) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review about how I feel about this book, and I want to send a big Thank you to them for that.

This is a lot of people's favourite children's classic, and for that reason I was very intrigued to read it. Having now finished it, I'm convinced that had I grown up with this story as a child, I would've been even more enchanted by it than I was now, reading it for the first time as an adult.
I'm not going to go into any details as to why I didn't absolutely love this book, simply because I didn't feel like anything was necessarily wrong with it. It was a good and sweet story about changes and the way you look at things, people and life, and it was endearing to read about the protagonist's journey as well as the secret garden.
I will say, though, that this story reminded me a lot of another book I read recently and didn't really like: "The Forgotten Garden" by Kate Morton. I'm sure Morton was inspired by this classic to write her story, but maybe that connection decresed my reading experience of this one. It's hard to say, but for now let's just say that I liked "The Secret Garden" but it didn't manage to find a place near to my heart, unfortunately.

MISTRESS MARY, QUITE CONTRARY. HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? WITH SILVER BELLS AND COCKLESHELLS. AND MARIGOLDS ALL IN A ROW."

This delightful children's classic, first published in 1911, pulled me right in with the cholera outbreak and continued with a bit of mystery, lots of magic and some pretty important learning experiences for both children and adults alike.

Not surprising this wonderful work is on the "100 Books Everyone Should Read At Least Once" list. Enchanting super-fast read with a beauty of a cover. Loved it!

Este libro tiene magia.
Magia que absorben sus personajes y que se transmite a través de sus páginas.

Es una historia muy simple, con unos personajes insufribles al principio y con un final muy predecible pero con un mensaje verdaderamente necesario en nuestra vida. Tan importante para hacernos sentir vivos que necesitamos que alguien nos lo recuerde de vez en cuando.

Precioso libro.

"Permitir que un pensamiento triste o malo penetre en la mente es tan peligroso como dejar que un microbio de escarlatina entre en tu cuerpo. Y si se permite que se quede allí una vez ha entrado, es posible que nunca nos podamos librar de él en todos los años de nuestra vida."

Edit: Please don't leave self entitled opinions in the comments. This is my review, my opinion and it isn't going to change. If you enjoyed this, good for you. I didn't. Move on.

Straight off the bat I'm going to say that there were several incredibly racist remarks made at the start of this book, mainly from maid Martha. It made me very uncomfortable and I wouldn't give this book to my children to read. I'd rather watch the 1993 film.

Aside from that, which thankfully didn't continue throughout the later stages of the story (although it's never addressed either), I actually really liked the themes of nurturing and rebirth. Mary Lennox is not a likeable child. She's spoilt and cruel and starved of love. However through her love of a little Robin, and a forgotten garden, she learns to appreciate life and all that it has to offer. The dawn of spring brings with it flowers, baby animals and hope for the future, with vivid depictions of the garden and wildlife that help bring the story to life. The parallels between Mary and Colin were nicely explored too, and their relationship brings out the best in each other. Dickon will forever be my favourite character though. His boundless love of animals and the moor were infectious, and integral to Mary's growth.

I'd be hesitant to recommend this, knowing that there are so many amazing childrens books out there these days that are wonderfully diverse and just generally better. However if you're looking for a nostalgic read, this is very true to the 1993 film and brought back quite a few fond memories.

Actual rating 4.5/5 stars.

I have vivid memories of reading this renowned children's classic when I was very young. I can distinctly recall my shock at reading a book with such an initially dislikable protagonist, the likes of which I had not yet discovered during my few years of reading. I was intrigued by the petulant Mary Lennox and was enchanted by her discovery of the secret garden. This, I believe, was my my first introduction to dark and brooding main characters, and probably even honed my later love for female Gothic fiction, so I am eternally indebted to it, for that.

It has now been many years since my young repeated readings of this book and I tried to divorce these emotions from my present reading. Whether or not I was successful I could not say, but this still entranced me just as much as it did as a child. This book has always held a nostalgic place in my heart but I now love it even more for the joy it continued to bring to my adult self.

I never read this book as a child. It is a great story with the children saving the adults. Mary is an interesting character. Her parents essentially abandon her while living in India and living a hedonistic lifestyle. They suddenly die and the spoilt Mary is sent to live at her Uncle Cravens Misselthwaite House in Yorkshire on the moors.

Mary is a selfish spoilt child. At the house she discovers a secret enclosed garden where she begins a journey of self discovery with Dickon and later her hypochondriac cousin Colin. The secret garden and its magic cures the children and also saves Colins father.

The plotting of the story is excellent with mysteries being solved and the redemption of the children through unselfish acts. It was odd how in the final part of the book Mary’s part nearly disappeared and was superseded by Colin. Overall a great story for children.

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.

“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!

It was an absolutely lovely read.

It is strange how you just know about some books since childhood and you know you should read them... and STILL you don't get round to, only as an adult.

It took me the reading of the author's "adult" books like The Making of a Marchioness and The Shuttle to make me finally arrive back to The Secret Garden.

But I arrived nevertheless and I enjoyed it a lot. It was a lovely walk and recreation.

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.