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WONDERFUL review- and thank you so much- I am headed to my parents house this weekend and I WILL be digging up that book to read to my children- ages 7 and 9, who help me in the garden and who also have their own 'secret gardens'.
I was born in England and that book was one of my very favorites growing up- thank you again for helping me to 'remember' before my children are to old to wonder!
Thank you for writing, Kathy! I think your kids should be the perfect ages to enjoy being read to ... I think I waited too long with my own two, or didn't try hard enough, or was outpaced by HARRY POTTER, or something. Good luck this weekend!
Amazing flood of childhood memories with my gardening grandmother, who living w/her the last two yrs. of WWII, not only read me her childhood book of "The Secret Garden", but gifted it to me for my 8th BD 3 yrs. after the war. I believe it might have been a first addition (I have same author's first addition of Little Lord Faunteroy) but my again loaned out "The secret Garden" seemed more updated like the 1920s;
gray cover with Mary in center illustration - and much more detail of story in a thicker hard-cover book then the condenced version of the last 50 yrs. And now must find out which family member loaned to, now has the book, as me thinks I need to bring it home. (Have a condenced version paperback that I read for fun every spring, just before gardening season.) Remember my mother taking me to the first movie of same, with dark-haired Margaret O'Brien playing the part of Mary. Story sort of the same, but one got the impression that near teen-age Mary & Dicken would become sweethearts and marry one day in the garden. Not sure what year that movie came out, but before my teens of the 1950s. Wonderful story, especially the dream of Colin's depressed father on vacation to stay away from Mithlewait Manor to get a note from Dicken's Mom to come home, and his dream to come home to the garden.
Thank you for writing! Did your book look like this? I never read that it was condensed. ... But that old volume might be valuable, and definitely sentimental. I appreciate your comment.
My book from my grandmother (born1896) was standard thick for most authors of the last century. The cover is pale gray with a small graphic (artist's rendention of that era) of a tiny, washed out blond female child, with sort of crinkled long hair, sitting or standing under a tree, and I think she may have had a hat on, and a coat of gray. Maybe dots of color of flowers under the tree.
Not 'back then' in my youth of noting book printing date, or gardening & I think long before my current 25 yr. mega-help or bash from Mother Nature to become addictive to gardening, I realize that book is no longer in my possession. Been a bit on a rampage lately, of all I think it was loaned to, and no luck yet. I feel bad about this sloppiness of not keeping track of mega books I've loaned over the years, and it wasn't until I stumbled onto this SECRET GARDEN msg., that I got to thinking how it would be so much nicer if I could read the whole old book (again) of my grandmother's than the one afternoon quickie version under a winter quillt with two purring kittings with a condenced skinny paperbackl But that's fun too, w/memories of the old book and just waiting for the weeks to come to finally dig in my dirt.
ckl aka VT Roots
I know there are lots of condensed or abridged versions available (for new-fangled children!) but the standard HarperCollins edition has the same text as Burnett originally wrote ... click the link in the article; it will take you to an online reproduction of the original version! If there is a different version, I'd be very interested to know about it.
Thanks again, and good lick tracking down your lost editions!
