In “Secret Garden,” healing begins with imagining a hopeful future. It’s a lesson for dealing with our environmental challenges.
The secret garden in Burnett’s novel works as a metaphor for the soul.
A “Paris Review” writer makes a great case that we should reread “Secret Garden” during the pandemic.
19th century literature is filled with images of illness. Reading it should make us grateful to the advances in medical science.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bleak House, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, epidemics, fathers and sons, George Eliot, Illness, Ivan Turgenev, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, Middlemarch, North and South, pandemics, Secret Garden | The young people helping America rediscover decency concerning guns resemble Mary and Colin in “The Secret Garden.”
A top ten list of classics with positive depictions of parent-child relationships.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Mother to Son", Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, George Eliot, Golden Bowl, Harper Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Fielding, Henry James, Huckleberry Finn, Langston Hughes, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Mark Twain, Parent-child relationships, Silas Marner, Tempest, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Jones, Uncle Tom's Cabin, William Shakespeare | “I am Peter Pan,” Michael Jackson reportedly once said, and of course he chose to name his ranch Neverland. In this second of my two posts marking Jackson’s death, I thought I would reflect upon why J. M. Barrie’s fictional creation meant so much to him. Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. A. Milne, Alice in Wonderland, Annabelle Lee, Edgar Allen Poe, innocence, J. M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, Michael Jackson, Peter Pan, Secret Garden, Vladimir Nabokov, Winnie the Pooh | William Kristof, the much traveled Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, wrote recently about the disturbing way that children’s IQ scores often drop over summer vacation. The cause is lack of intellectual stimulation. The problem is more severe with poor than it is with middle class kids. As an antidote, Kristof offered […]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. A. Milne, Alexander Dumas, Alice in Wonderland, Around the World in 80 Days, Arthur Conan Doyle, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, C.S. Lewis, Cecil Day-Lewis, children's books, E. Nesbitt, Freddy the Pig, George MacDonald, Hardy Boys, Homer, Iliad, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jules Verne, Jungle Books, Just So Stories, Knights of King Midas, Lewis Carroll, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Lost World, Mistress Masham's Repose, Narnia Chronicles, Otterbury Incident, Paul Berna, Rudyard Kipling, Scarlet Pimpernel, summer reading, T.H. White, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess and Curdie, The Secret Garden, Three Musketeers, Treasure Seekers, William Kristof, Winnie the Pooh, Would Be Goods | Children, when they start developing a sense of self, discover that there is a preset gender program they are expected to conform to. For some this is not a problem, but others feel constrained by their assigned designation. It’s not always that girls want to be boys and boys girls. Sometimes they just want to […]