When orphaned Mary Lennox was sent off to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Indeed, she was "Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary," through and through! Yet there was something strange about the place she was heading for. Said Mrs. Medlock to Mary beforehand, "Do you know anything about your uncle?" "No," said Mary frowning. She frowned because she remembered how her father and mother had never talked to her about anything in particular. "Humph," muttered Mrs. Medlock, staring at Mary's queer, unresponsive little face for a few moments. Then she said, "I suppose you might as well be told something, to prepare you. You are going to a rather queer place!"

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Aegypan
Published: 05/01/2008
Pages: 188
Weight: 0.99lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d
ISBN: 9781606648940
Audience: 01 - 12

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.3
Point Value: 13
Interest Level: Middle Grade
Quiz #/Name: 78 / Secret Garden (Unabridged)

About the Author
Burnett, Frances Hodgson: - "Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (1849 - 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (published in 1885-1886), A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911). She was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1852, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in Jefferson City, Tennessee. There Frances began writing to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines from the age of 19. In 1870, her mother died and in 1872 Frances married Swan Burnett, who became a medical doctor. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their two sons were born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), was published to good reviews. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess. Burnett enjoyed socializing and lived a lavish lifestyle. Beginning in the 1880s, she began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her oldest son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life.[1] She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townsend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, Long Island, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery. In 1936 a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honour in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon."