The Secret Garden.

A disagreeable, unloved child is sent from India to a vast, echoing house on the Yorkshire moors, where locked doors and hidden griefs seem to fill every corridor. From this unpromising beginning Frances Hodgson Burnett grows one of the most cherished children's novels in the English language, a story in which a neglected garden and a neglected child slowly, patiently bring each other back to life. It is a book about second chances written with such quiet conviction that generations of readers have carried its images with them long into adulthood.

What it's about

Mary Lennox arrives at Misselthwaite Manor spoiled, sickly, and solitary, with no idea how to be a child among children. But a friendly robin, a plain-spoken servant girl, the wide open moor, and rumours of a garden shut up and locked for ten years begin to draw her slowly out of herself. Discovering the walled garden, and later a hidden, frightened invalid cousin shut away in the great house, Mary joins with the moor-wise, animal-loving boy Dickon to coax both the neglected ground and the neglected household back toward health. As the roses wake and the earth turns green, so too do the children, each finding in the work of tending living things a cure that no doctor had managed to supply.

Themes

Renewal and healing lie at the very heart of the book, along with the restorative power of nature, fresh air, useful work, and the plain kindness of ordinary people. Burnett writes with real feeling about loneliness turning slowly into friendship, about grief that has curdled into fear, and about the way that caring for something outside yourself can mend what has broken within.

Why it still matters

The novel's faith in growth, patience, the outdoors, and the healing company of others feels newly relevant to readers of any age, and its transformation of prickly, difficult children into thriving ones is achieved without a trace of preaching. Its walled garden has become one of the enduring images of children's literature, a symbol of the hidden capacity for renewal that we carry even when we seem most shut down.

Who it's for

For young readers and the adults reading aloud to them, for anyone who loves gardens and the turning of the seasons, and for readers of all ages in search of a gentle, hopeful story about the slow work of coming back to life.

Sources and references

Verified references for this edition: Open Library, WorldCat, Frances Hodgson Burnett on Wikipedia.