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Summary: This book can really hit home for some people!
Review: This book is a very sentimental book. Yet a very heartwarming book. I recommend for everybody to read it!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: A timeless classic. . .
Review: Plain and colorless Mary goes to live at her great uncle's
house after being orphaned. She meets Colin, the cousin she'd never known, Martha, who is always happy and sweet,
Dickon, the boy who is magic with animals, but most of all she meets The Secret Garden, a garden locked up for several
years, but now being opened by Mary and her new friends
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful story...
Review: I first read this book when I was six years old. I fell in love with the secret garden, with the idea of a place that could cure broken hearts and restore health and happiness. I must have read that book hundreds of times, to myself, friends, children and grandchildren. It has a special place in my heart, and will earn one in your's, too. I honestly hope that anyone who needs hope in their life will share in the special magic of a forgotten garden
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Summary: A Classic
Review: I think that this is FHB's best book. Although I certainly enjoy the romatic ideas of diamond mines, life-size dolls, and (completly platonic) secret admirers (as all appear in "A Little Princess") nothing beats the spunky nature and burgeonng independance of Mary, Colin and Dickon.After her parents die of Cholera, spoiled brat Mary is sent to live with her uncle in Yorshire. She is shocked, absolutely shocked, to find a world that is the complete opposite of India. Not just the weather: gone is the fully staffed nursery which completely revolved around her every whim (and she had a lot of them) and in its place is a local maid who brings her breakfast and that's about it. Mary doesn't even know how to dress herself. Appalled at first by the notion of having to look after herself, Mary discovers that it's really not so bad. Especially when she discovers a secret garden that has been locked for ten years. Together with her cousin, a boy as bratty and obnoxious as she is, and Dickon, a local boy with a way with living things, she sets about to bring the garden back to life. Mary and Colin, who have been raised with fairly good intentions and plenty of material possesions but no real love, learn what love is as they care for and nurture the garden. Burnett really has an ear for children's dialogue, and she brings a real sympathy to Colin and Mary even when they are at their most obnoxious. In addition, their transformation is believable, complete with little relapses into their self-absorbed natures. This is a book that is perfect for people of all ages.
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Summary: A Secret Garden and a not-so-secret theological philosophy
Review: One question may pop up when thinking about Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden". How much of it is literature and how much is religion philosophy in disguise? This novel contains both of them, and while it can be annoying for some adults, the religion approach, kids may never realize that the book is trying to talk them into `a new form of religion'.
Many of the events of Mary Lennox's childhood depicted in the novel mirror those in Burnett's days as a child. However, "The Secret Garden" isn't only an autobiographical novel. When writing the book, this author was under the influence of the the influence of the ideas of the New Thought, theosophy, and Christian Science movements -- which were very popular in the turn of the 20 Century.
What Colin and Mary call "Magic" in the novel is much related to the idea that the spirit known as God held to be present everywhere, and especially in nature. These Christian Science and New Thoughts also believe in positive thinking changing people's lives, curing oneself of illness through this kind of magical thinking, or changing the character of one's fortunes. Bearing this in mind, it is clear that the characters search for a divine cure -- which might be found in the Garden.
While most of the novel is told in an almost magical tone, near the end, the real motifs are revealed, when the children gather to sing religious songs and prayers. Much of the Christian Science is explicitly present in this last part of the novel. When one character says that "say things over and over and think about them until they stay in your mind forever" it is related to the emphasis upon the power and necessity of positive thinking.
While "The Secret Garden" is not a bad novel, its religious content may bother many readers. It is not very preachy, but at some point, the writer abandons the shyness and spread her religion beliefs everywhere. It is her right of doing it, but it is also a reader's right to know that and decide if he/she wants to read about a group of kids finding religion and having their lives changed.
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