Barnes and Noble is giving away two versions of the classic Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, as this week's Free Friday nookBook. First, the Classic Starts illustrated edition (cover shown here), which is only available as a $5.95 paperback from Amazon. Second, their annotated Barnes & Noble Classics series edition (which has previously been free at B&N.The Secret Garden (Classic Starts Series), by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lucy Corvino (Illustrator), Abridged by Martha Hailey DuBose and Arthur Pober (Afterword)
Expertly retold to appeal to second to fourth graders, as well as older reluctant readers, each of the beautiful, high-quality books in the Classic Starts series is a literary treasure.
Secret Garden (Barnes & Noble Classics Series), by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Jill Muller
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras.
Though Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote more than forty books, none remains so popular as her miraculous and magical masterpiece, The Secret Garden. Has any story ever dared to begin by calling its heroine, the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen and, just a few sentences later, as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived? Mary Lennoxis the little pig, sent to Misselthwaite Manor, on the Yorkshire moors, to live with her uncle after her parents die of cholera. There she discovers her sickly cousin Colin, who is equally obnoxious and imperious. Both love no one because they have never been loved. They are the book s spiritual secret gardens, needing only the right kind of care to bloom into lovely children.
Mary also discovers a literal secret garden, hidden behind a locked gate on her uncle s estate, neglected for the ten years since Colin s birth and his mother s death. Together with a local child named Dickon, Mary and Colin transform the garden into a paradise bursting with life and color. Through their newfound mutual love of nature, they nurture each other, until they are brought back to health and happiness.
With Charles Robinson's original illustrations.
Jill Muller was born in England and educated at Mercy College and Columbia University. She currently teaches at Mercy College and Columbia University. She is the author of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Victorian Catholicism, in addition to articles on Joyce, Newman, Hopkins, and the medieval women mystics.
