Young Classics: Secret Garden

In this story, Mary Lennox is living in India when cholera takes the life of her parents. She then travels to England to live with her uncle at Misselthwaite Manor on the edge of the bleak Yorkshire moors.

Mary is used to being waited on hand and foot and she soon starts to feel lonely and becomes very unhappy living in a manor filled with a maze of dark passageways and tapestry walls.

Soon she ventures outside and finds the key to the hidden door of the locked garden which has been shut up for over ten years. Once Mary meets Dickon she tells him she has: "stolen a garden."

"When Mary entered the secret garden she found Dickon already kneeling on the grass working hard. "Oh, Dickon! Dickon!" She said. I'm so happy I can scarcely breathe." They ran from one part of the garden to another and found so many wonders that they had to remind themselves that they must be quiet. There was every joy on earth in the secret garden that morning, and then came the most delightful surprise of all. Swiftly something flew across the wall and darted through the trees to an overgrown corner." Pg. 33

Soon she finds another project. The rather spoiled Colin, who is crying pitifully. Mary bewitches him and soon he is reading pictures books. Dickon also becomes a friend and soon the three of them are out in the garden teaching Colin to walk again.

A story about how one person can change the world they live in for the better.

The 1993 Secret Garden movie: ASIN: 0790720434
is the best one I have seen so far.