Rating: 
Summary: So powerful, it gives you goosebumps
Review: No movie version nor the Broadway musical effectively capture this book. On screen or on stage, it doesn't translate well because it doesn't show the wonderful transformations of the characters.The Secret Garden is a fabulous story and wonderfully well-written. Orphaned Mary Lennox comes to live with her uncle. She is sickly (both physically and emotionally). She is spoiled, inactive, lazy and pale. When she discovers the secret garden, she decides to keep it for herself. But she can't remain alone, and she can't keep the garden to herself; Mary must learn to share, both the garden and her life. As the garden transforms from a lifeless, ugly place, Mary transforms, too. This slow, beautiful process (of the garden and Mary) coming to life is what makes the book so wonderful (and the movies not so good). The greatness of this book lies not in its plot (which almost everyone knows) but in the way the plot unfolds and the characters blossom. Martha, Dickon, Colin and Archibald play their parts in Mary's transformation, and they, too, are changed by the wondrous things that happen.
Rating: 
Summary: Mistress Mary Quite Contrary..
Review: The story starts with Mary Lennox. Miss Lennox, a small thin girl with a thin face and a little thin body, her hair also thin and colorless along with her sour expression-you could easily see her personality described quite easily on her face. She lives in India. Her father being a high official under the English Government, her mother being a beautiful lady who only cared to go to parties and did not want to have a child in the first place both discarded Mary vigorously. Put under the care of an Ayah she turns into a selfish, disagreeable little girl that nobody seems to take any notice of. One day a terrible disease falls across the house and with both her parents dead aswell as half of the servants, the rest flee in fright and leave Mary quite forgotten in her small nursery until two officers find her.
She is taken to England and is told to live with Mr. Archibald Craven, a hunchback who's wife's brother was Mary's father. Slowly, as she lives in such a deary and quiet house she gets to know Mr. Craven and for the first time learns how to trust and love and care for people. She lets Mr. Craven open up a little more and in return she learns to open her heart. She also meets Dickon-the boy who seems to talk to animals. She ponders the boy's ways as they are so different to hers. So much brighter and more lively Dickon is always full of warmth and enthusiasm. Together they find The Secret Garden which belonged to Mr. Craven's dead wife and build it back to life. Although the process is slow one day she discovers the whimpers that come somewhere far deep into the house at night and meets with Mr. Craven's son-Colin. Colin being just as disagreeable a child and self absorbed as Mary herself, although at first they fight a great deal and do not start off with a good start, they end up helping each other.
The book is a worthwhile read and a beautiful story.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: This book was pretty good.It has a few complicated words,but I can understand them.Children who aren't too young should buy it.
Rating:
Summary: And delight reigneth!
Review: Ages 9 and up the cover informs which at age 50 allows me in on one of the most beautiful reading experiences of a lifetime. It is romantic in the best sense of the word: one thinks of Blake's "to see a world in a grain of sand," or in this case in a secret garden. For this is a romance of two odd, solitary children who fall in love--not with each other--but with the world. To grow from isolation to friendship, from solitude to joy, from loathing of self to delight in nature, the themes are standard but deeply felt and movingly evoked in simple but lovely prose. The world is beautiful, once wrote Thomas Merton, to remind us we were originally meant for paradise. The Secret Garden is another such reminder. "I'm going to live forever and ever and ever," Colin famously exults and in this great book for children and adults he does and he does and he does.
Rating:
Summary: A GREAT story about being able to grow and change!
Review: The Secret Garden is an enclosed garden that belonged to Mary Lennox's pretty Aunt Lilias. When she died, her husband, Mr. Archibald Craven, locked up the painful memories of the garden and most of Misselthwaite Manor's one hundred rooms. But when frail, spoiled Mary comes from India to live with her uncle at her parents' death, she soon befriends a robin who shows her where the key was buried - and at last, after ten years, the garden is reopened! Contrary-minded Mary grows sweet and healthy along with her cousin, Colin, and the garden she and friendly Dickon heal. . . . This is a great story, matched with Tasha Tudor's pretty pen-and-ink drawings. Everyone should be able to experience this wonderful book!
Rating:
Summary: An all-time favorite
Review: My mother read me The Secret Garden when I was very young (around the age of 5), and it was a favorite book of my childhood. I can remember daydreaming about what it would be like to be friends with Dickon and to tell all my secrets to Mary and to go running with Colin. Now that I'm in college, this is still one of my favorite books, and I make sure to read it at least once a year. It's beautifully written and never fails to spark my imagination.
Rating:
Summary: A book for all ages
Review: I read this book with my daughter who is four. She really enjoyed it and looked forward to reading the next chapter each night. It took us a while to read because I would stop often to explain what certain words meant and to discuss what was going on in the book to make sure she was following along. We would start out a new chapter by reviewing what had happened so far. I have found that her vocabulary has expanded greatly. I think it takes a lot for a young child to sit and listen to a chapter book but they gain so much from it. You just have to be careful to take it slow and not to overload them. I also know we can read this book over and over as she grows up and she will get more and more out of it. I would say it's very much worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: Not to be read to young children
Review: I bought this book thinking it would be a good classic to read to my bright five-year-old daughter. I had never read it myself and I am surprised how boring this book is. Much of the language is way beyond my daughter's comprehension. The word "queer" appears hundreds of times, and I only hope I've convinced my daughter that it is no longer an appropriate word to call people. The book is endlessly repetitive, endlessly. I find it to be poorly written and can't believe we wasted our time & money on it. The movie version is quite a bit better. Older children might like this book, but there are some many better choices for even them to read.
Rating:
Summary: Growing Up In Secret
Review: My copy of *The Secret Garden* has lost its cover; all the pages are curled from being turned so many times; the text has faded to brown, and there's a big mark where I must have spilled something on it in my desire to keep reading through a meal. Mary Lennox, spoiled beyond belief, sallow and plain, comes from India to Misselthwaite Manor in order to live with her uncle. The manor, however, is full of mystery, and the goal of everyone seems to be to keep Mistress Mary out of the way and, preferably, out of the house. In the course of time, she discovers that the mystery of the house is her cousin, Colin, a child almost as badly spoiled as she is, and whom everyone has written off as likely to die. Together, with a new friend Dickon, Mary and Colin begin to take an interest in life. They begin to revive a secret walled up garden. And, over time, gardening makes them well in mind and spirit (one might note this down). The seasons change; the flowers bloom; the robin builds a nest. The children are growing up as the garden is transformed. Colin becomes almost sturdy; Mary is neither sallow nor plain. The spoiled, peremptory rude little monsters are gone. I almost miss their dreadful ways at the end. There's a wonderful scene early on in which Colin throws a tantrum, and Mary threatens to throw an even worse one unless he stops. She claims to be able to scream louder than he can, and I believe her. Don't miss this book. It takes its own time to unfold, but some things are best savored slowly.
Rating:
Summary: Enchanting
Review: Sometimes there is a children's book that mystefies and enchants at the same time - that seems like it walked out of a dream. "The Secret Garden" is one of these books. The setting in untamed moores of England and the child whose grim outlook is changed simply by growing a garden is a fantasic combination. And when Burnett adds a fussy invalid cousin, a bright and cheery maid and her mischevious little brother, and the haunting memories of a beautiful aunt - you're hooked. The words seem to float right from the pages to form scenes of despair and drudgery, that change from their shades of dull gray to a bright and vivid garden, where the characters come alive.
|
