The Secret Garden

Since childhood I have probably seen five different film versions of this magnificent book. Most recently I saw a version on Netflix which brought me back decades. There are many reasons I enjoyed this film and why I have ended up watching it over and over again. The original book was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett and published in 1911. The story revolves around Mary Lennox, a young girl whose rich but absent parents died in India leaving her to be raised in the estate of an estranged uncle in England. At first she despises everything about the place and people she meets. She is more or less isolated in the large home and not allowed to wander into most rooms. Eventually her curious nature gets the better of her and she discovers a sickly cousin and a garden that has been locked up for over a decade. She also meets a young boy there who helps her restore the garden to its former glory while changing Mary and all the people around her. The Secret Garden is definitely a must-read and worth watching, especially the 1993 film version.

"The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite."