Book 22- "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Another classic down.

I read this book on a free eBook app while I was flying across the country... then I was very sad to find out that it was the very abridged version. I thought it seemed short... but so I skimmed the real version. It was the same as the free eBook version, just with more detail.

Mary Lennox is a British girl who grew up in India to parents who didn't really want her around. She became very spoiled, because the servants didn't want her to upset her parents. Then they all died within a day of cholera, leaving her there alone. She was sent to a few houses, then to Mr. Archibald Craven's in England. He was a miserable old man who had an enormous house that she couldn't explore, and some gardens out back. She slowly began to open up to her new world, and be less unkind to everyone. She made friends with her maid Martha, the gardener Ben, and a little robin. There was a garden that belonged to Mr. Craven's wife, but when she died 10 years before he locked it up and buried the key. Nobody would talk about the garden to her. One day she happened to find the key, and then the door to the garden. She begins tending to it without telling anyone. She finds out that Mr. Craven has a son named Colin who was born about the time his wife died, and he thinks that he is going to die as a hunchback like his father. She befriends him by telling him how spoiled she is (ironic...) and ultimately she and her friend Dickon (Martha's brother) take Colin outside to the garden. When he finds out he is NOT going to die, Colin decides to embrace life and start learning to walk again. Ultimately he surprises his father by walking to him out of the garden.

That is a VERY brief version of the story. It is a sweet and simple story about a girl who learns to grow and mature through some hardships. She never knew how spoiled she was and how hard her life was until she didn't have it anymore, and then she decided to own up to it.

It was kind of hard to keep interested in, which doesn't bode well that I have "A Little Princess" by the same author reserved. However, it was a nice blast from the past since I used to watch the movie a lot as a kid.