They are the book’s spiritual secret gardens, needing only the right kind of care to bloom into lovely children. Both love no one because they have never been loved. There she discovers her sickly cousin Colin, who is equally obnoxious and imperious. The synopsis from the publisher reads, “Has any story ever dared to begin by calling its heroine, ‘the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen’ and, just a few sentences later, ‘as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived?’ Mary Lennox is the ‘little pig,’ sent to Misselthwaite Manor, on the Yorkshire moors, to live with her uncle after her parents die of cholera. Meanwhile this is almost a perfect children’s book. – Kate CoombsĬoming in at #8 on the previous poll, Mary Lennox slips a little, leaving wide open another spot on the top ten. There’s just something magical about that secret garden.
Its old-fashioned plot about Colin being healed rather mystically is almost beside the point.
It took Frances Hodgson Burnett to give that yearning a shape, and even if the shape isn’t quite what a particular child might ultimately choose, the reader knows the feeling for what it is.
And Mary’s plea, “Might I have a bit of earth?” has been calling across the decades to hundreds of young readers who long for-something. How nice to start a book with an irritating child instead of a lovable one. And “Here Comes the Sun” is my favorite song. – Erin Moehringīack before having small children zapped my time/attention span, I read this every year around March. It’s one of the few picture books I keep on my shelf, rather than my son’s. This the very first book I read by myself, and my dad insists I read this book to him over 1000 times. #15 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)
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