The Secret Garden

This summer on a stroll through London, I passed by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s home which is marked with one of the fabulous blue plaques that mark English Heritage sites. I hadn’t thought of her work in quite some time. In fact, I hadn’t read The Secret Garden since I was a young boy. But I knew I loved it, and it piqued my interest again because I was contemplating starting a fantasy book club when I returned home, and I wondered if The Secret Garden might be a good pick for an early read. You see, in my memory, The Secret Garden was very much a fantasy story because the garden was magic. It changed people. It healed them.

So, now I have just re-read this novel for the first time in nearly 30 years. And I’m delighted to rediscover that — though the story is not fantasy, of course — it is, indeed, about magic of a very real and attainable sort. And the garden did change people. It did heal them. And I remember what I loved so much about it as a young boy.