The Secret Garden

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Paperback Edition: 1991, Worthington Press
288 pages, 27 chapters

Summary: Ever wonder what happened when a pompous, snobbish, self-destruct girl get moved into a grand mansion located in the middle of the moor? Being a so-cross girl Mary Lennox never has anything,or rather anyone, to be considered friend. Even her own parents cast her away from their life. While solving mysteries enveloped the mansion and the secret garden said to be hidden within, she began to grow, to understand more and more about life outside her palace.

My Comments: I always love self-finding story. Unique characterizations, varying from Mistress Mary ‘Quite Contary’, Martha and her broad Yorkshire accent(Grab this book if you’re interested in some Yorkshire), Animal charmer Dickon (which is my favorite character in this book), Ben Weatherstaff’s loyalty to his late mistress, to hypochondriac Colin. Mary and Colin’s progresses of learning that they can be anything they believe of, helped by Martha and Dickon, are wonderful. I can imagine myself run around the moor and the garden, singing Colin’s chant that begins to grow on me:

”The magic is in me-the magic is in me. It is in me-it is in me. It’s in every one of us.”