Children · Drama
The Secret Garden
A lonely, angry girl finds the key to a garden that has been locked for ten years.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
Misselthwaite Manor
Mary Lennox is ten, spoiled, sickly and disagreeable. When cholera kills her parents in India, she is sent to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven, a sad, absent man with a huge, gloomy house on the Yorkshire moors. Nobody has time for her except Martha, a cheerful young housemaid who talks to her as no servant in India ever did. Martha tells her about a garden that has been locked for ten years, its key buried, since the death of Mr Craven’s wife. And at night, somewhere in the house, Mary hears crying. Frances Hodgson Burnett published it in 1911, after a run as a serial in an American magazine.
Why it works for learners
This is a book about things growing: a garden, a friendship, a child’s health and temper. Its vocabulary is concrete and seasonal (seeds, roots, leaves, rain, wind, spring, robin, spade), and it repeats as the garden comes back to life. Mary’s change from a cross little girl into a curious, strong one is easy to follow, and the scenes are quiet and clear.
Learners will enjoy one thread in particular. Martha and her brother Dickon speak broad Yorkshire, and Mary, to her own surprise, starts to pick it up and use it as a kind of secret language. In the original, that dialect can be hard going; at lower levels the meaning comes first.
Which level to start at
A2 is a good start, and B1 is ideal. The plot is simple, but the book’s beauty is in its patient descriptions, which B1 and B2 keep. In English at C1 and C2, the Yorkshire speech becomes part of the charm; a tap explains each dialect word.
Read next
- A Little Princess, Burnett’s other great novel about a girl from India
- Heidi, an orphan who finds her place in the Alps
- Anne of Green Gables, another orphan who changes a household