This book is full of engaging questions that help students connect with literature.
Examples:
• Martha's question when Mary is cranky at the start of novel (students then asked themselves this question and wrote about what they liked about themselves).
“How does tha’ like thysel’?” she inquired, really quite as if she were curious to know.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
• Mary's question about if her secret would be safe (and then we studied Tennyson's poem "The Throstle" in class).
“If tha’ was a missel thrush an’ showed me where thy nest was, does tha’ think I’d tell any one? Not me,” he said. “Tha’ art as safe as a missel thrush.”
And she was quite sure she was.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
• Colin explaining why he had finally pulled back the curtain to see the portrait of his mother's laughing face after leaving it covered so many years (students then made many personal connections to the challenge of connecting with a person when the other person was not matching their own feelings.)
"You are wondering why the curtain is drawn back. I am going to keep it like that."
"Why?" asked Mary.
"Because it doesn't make me angry any more to see her laughing."
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
This book allows students to explore a different definition of magic from our other novels (like the Arthurian legends). In "The Secret Garden", magic is the wonder of plants, animals, children and adults growing. What a delightful concept to explore in the spring!
Examples:
“It's something, it can be nothing. I don't know its name, so I call it magic. I've never seen a sunrise, but Mary and Dickon have, and for what they tell me, I'm sure that is magic, too. Something pushes it up and draws it. Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something were pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of Magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden--in all the places. The Magic in this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a man. I am going to make the scientific experiment of trying to get some and put it in myself and make it push and draw me and make me strong. I don't know how to do it but I think that if you keep thinking about it and calling it perhaps it will come.
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
This novel is full of empowerment as first one child and then another feels their power to grow themselves gradually improve.
“So long as Colin shut himself up in his room and thought only of his fears and weakness and his detestation of people who looked at him and reflected hourly on humps and early death, he was a hysterical half-crazy little hypochondriac who knew nothing of the sunshine and the spring and also did not know that he could get well and could stand upon his feet if he tried to do it. When new beautiful thoughts began to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his blood ran healthily through his veins and strength poured into him like a flood. His scientific experiment was quite practical and simple and there was nothing weird about it at all. Much more surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place. "Where, you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
“In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any other century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they see it can be done- then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of these things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts- just mere thoughts- are as powerful as electric batteries- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live."
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
1911
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Finally, there is so much beautiful language in this novel to reward the reader and uplift them.
For example, Mary's answer when Colin asks her what is spring and Mr. Craven's answer when she asks him for a bit of earth.
• [Spring]“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth', said Mary.
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
• “Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?”
In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say.
Mr. Craven looked quite startled.
“Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?”
“To plant seeds in—to make things grow—to see them come alive,” Mary faltered.
He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his eyes.
“Do you—care about gardens so much,” he said slowly.
“I didn’t know about them in India,” said Mary. “I was always ill and tired and it was too hot. I sometimes made little beds in the sand and stuck flowers in them. But here it is different.”
Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.
“A bit of earth,” he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind.
“You can have as much earth as you want,” he said. “You remind me of some one else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a bit of earth you want,” with something like a smile, “take it, child, and make it come alive.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Here’s to sharing and developing the human joy of literature… this book is a seriously powerful and delightful way to do that.
