The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Mary Lennox lives in India, and then a disease called cholera breaks out and her whole family dies. She is sent to England to live at Misselthwaite Manor, and she is a mean and selfish girl who isn’t nice to anyone, and she does not like being outside, but she has to go outside even in winter because there is nothing to do inside. A servant, Martha, tells Mary about a secret garden that Mr Craven, who owns the Manor, locked up when his wife died, and one day while skipping, Mary found a key, and she thought it might be the key to the secret garden! She kept it with her, and one day she heard a wailing noise, and thought it was a child. But there were no other children in the house! But she did meet Dickon, Martha’s brother, and she helped the gardener Ben Weatherstaff in the garden. One day, she found the secret garden! It was unlike anything she had ever seen or heard about. As luck would have it, the next day it was pouring with rain, so she could not go outside, and she heard the wailing again, and found a boy called Colin, who was Mr Craven’s son, and Mary and Dickon made a plan to take Colin outside even though he was an invalid. When he was outside, he loved it, and went out every day when they visited the secret garden. After this, everybody’s lives got better.

I really like this book, because it shows how good nature can be, and how amazing it is. There is also a lot of magic in nature, and by the end of the book everyone’s lives have been transformed. It is a brilliant book and I really recommend it, although you must remember this was written about 100 years ago. I have read this book lots of times and every time I am impressed with how well it is written. It makes me want to go out into the garden and look at nature and grow things.

Book review by Edward Sollars, age 9