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The Secret GardenFrances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Orphaned Mary is sent to a Yorkshire house of shut rooms, and finds a walled garden that has been locked for ten years, and a boy nobody mentions.
A story about children, thoughtful and gentle in tone. We would put it with children of 9–12, and at a reading age of about 10 for reading alone.
Worth knowing before you buy
- A death or grief
- Serious illness
None of this makes it a bad book — often the opposite. It is here so you can decide whether it is right for your child now or in a year or two.
Our take on this book
Orphaned in India and shipped to a great shut-up house on the Yorkshire moors, sour, unloved Mary Lennox hears crying in the night and finds a walled garden that has been locked since a death ten years before. Bringing the garden back to life brings two half-buried children back to life with it. Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 novel is a quiet argument that fresh air, work and being needed can heal almost anything, and it earns the claim through the slow, believable thawing of two thoroughly disagreeable children into people worth knowing. There is loss in the background — Mary's parents, and the death that closed the garden — and a boy convinced he is dying, but the direction of the whole book is towards growth and health. For a nine- to twelve-year-old it rewards patience with something genuinely nourishing, and the Yorkshire dialect and the robin and the turning seasons make it a world to live inside.
If they like this, try these
Chosen by matching age, reading age, tone and subject — not by what is selling.
Bridge to TerabithiaKatherine Paterson
HatchetGary Paulsen
Kensuke's KingdomMichael Morpurgo
PaxSara Pennypacker
SkelligDavid Almond
The Boy Who Harnessed the WindWilliam Kamkwamba
Or let them write their own.
Nothing gets a child reading like a story they invented themselves. Your child plans the characters and the plot, and we write, illustrate and print it as a real book with their name on the cover as the author.
Find another book
Tell us the age, the reading age and what they like, and we will suggest a handful.