Nostalgia has a funny way of giving you a complex. It seems to inspire obsession in a concentrated way, further ostracizing those who weren’t in on the joke the first time around. This has happened to me a lot. I don’t like singing along to Disney movies as much as my friends are convinced I do. I think I watched about five episodes of the original Ren and Stimpy run. And the worst is that, apparently, I did not read.
Ok, I did read some. I read Goosebumps and the Wayside School stories and Calvin and Hobbes. I flipped through my mom’s old A. A. Milne books. I did my best with the Narnia series. But there are, apparently, large gaps in my collection, and there’s something about the modern penchant for nostalgia that shines a harsher light on this. Oh, the shock from my friends upon discovering I never read The Phantom Tollbooth. What did I mean, I hadn’t read Anne of Green Gables? How could I be a proper intellectual if I hadn’t spent my adolescence reading Little Women instead of making friends?
So with this series, I’m setting out to fill those gaps. This is my chance to see what my friends were talking about, and maybe retroactively get in on all those conversations. Or I’ll just see what nonsense everyone thought we should be taking in as children. It’ll be fun!
The Secret Garden (Indiebound | Amazon) was an obvious first choice, mostly because I already have a copy in my apartment. I have no idea how it got there, but I assume it was my mother’s. It’s a worn hardcover in faded-green canvas and full of illustrations. For some reason it ended up with me.
The Secret Garden is a pleasant book about a bunch of racists who are convinced that living in the windy moors of England somehow cures disease. Okay, that’s not all it is. It’s actually a pretty wonderful book. But, as with most books written before…1920? 1970? Last month? All right, just as with most books, it’s got some weird racist bits. These bits particularly struck home for me because my dad is an Indian immigrant. (I’ve been assured that A Little Princess is far more racist. I’ll get back to you on that.)
It starts off with Lady Mary (can we please pretend this is baby Lady Mary from Downton Abbey? People still watch that show, right? I know she’s supposed to be blonde but that would make her Lady Edith) wasting away in her palace in India because her parents don’t pay enough attention to her. (Colonialism!) Then her parents die, and Mary gets shipped to England to live with her uncle, Mr. Craven, in a different palace, except here people sometimes talk back to her and she doesn’t like that as much. Her new Yorkshire maid, Martha is like “Oh my god, why are you white?” because she expected everyone from India to be “a black,” but eventually the two of them start getting along, and Martha gets her to start running around outside and kibitzing with the gardener and stumbling upon…a secret.
I really love how shocked everyone is when she discovers the garden that her uncle shut up after his wife died, even though it’s basically all anyone talks about to her. “Oh, and by the way, there’s this garden that you never would find unless you were really looking and it’s locked because your benefactor, whom you’ve never met, forbids anyone to go in there, okay bye!” Then: “For some reason she couldn’t stop thinking about the garden.” They’re also surprised when she discovers her (also secret) invalid cousin, Colin, even though she hears him screaming in his room every single night.
So Mary spends most her time running around the gardens, trying to find the secret one, and working up an appetite. A good third of this book is dedicated to describing in detail just how “fat” Mary gets once she learns how to jump rope and do other active things, and though I do appreciate a setting where a little girl getting fat is a good thing, it is god damned boring. Chapter after chapter of how Martha’s mom thinks Mary should get some exercise, and Mary telling Martha “oh, your mom seems nice” and Mary going into the garden and hanging out with a bird. Maybe this is why I couldn’t get into these books when I was a kid. I lived in New York City with a mural that said “Crack is Wack” up the street from my apartment. I did not have time to read about a little girl who managed to finish an entire bowl of porridge.
In between the jump-roping and the eating, Mary sort of befriends Ben Weatherstaff, the crabby old groundskeeper, because they both like the same robin that keeps flying around the garden. At this point I start getting worried, because Mary is ten years old and doesn’t seem to have ever gone to school, and her only friends are an old man and possibly a bird. Someone in the book even suggests she should get a governess, but then Martha’s mom intervenes with, “Oh, she doesn’t need school, she needs to jump more rope!” And that’s how the patriarchy gets you.
But guys, we need to talk about Dickon.
Dickon is Martha’s brother. First, I spent the first 150 pages mentally referring to him as “Daikon,” like the radish, because I can’t read. Second, I am really worried about Dickon. Did they have meth back then? I think he’s on meth. He’s up every morning before the sun comes up, just wandering around the fields saying things like “ahahaha canna tha’ hear the birds and smell tha’ honey I’ve been here for four hours look a pony this is my friend the fox I eat one piece of toast a day and I’ve trained these squirrels to hang out on my shoulders because they trust me don’t you ever just want to crawl in the moor and die because it’s so beautiful I’m gonna dig now!!!!!!” It’s horrifying. It also doesn’t help that in my copy’s illustrations, he looks like Raggedy Katharine Hepburn. 
I also feel really bad for the children who read this and assumed that if they just had enough Magic (Magic is always capitalized in this book), squirrels would perch on their shoulder and be their friends. This is not how squirrels work. I got bit by a squirrel once, they are not a friendly bunch. Or maybe that’s just because I’m not an Angel of the Moor.
Anyway, the book moves on and pretty much forgets about Mary and Dickon to focus on Colin, Mary’s cousin who’s been told he’s an invalid his entire life. As soon as Colin starts trying to walk in the garden we never hear about Mary or even Dickon again, even though for the first three-quarters of the book she was its entire focus. What happened to her? Did she get nicer? Did she and Dickon fall in love? Way to follow through, Burnett. But Colin’s story is that he’s a little asshole who finally has someone (Mary) call him out on all the tantrums he throws, and he gets outside in the fresh English air and gains his strength and learns to walk until his dad comes home and loves him again.
For most of the book Colin is convinced he is going to die, because his weird doctor-uncle has told him he’s an ugly hunchback who is going to die. His doctor-uncle may or may not be next in line to inherit the mansion if Colin dies, so his motives may have been suspect. Sadly, it doesn’t pay off, and once Colin insists on going outside with Mary, his doctor-uncle basically says “well, that’s nice, you seem fine” and is never heard from again. Burnett seemed to want to write about four different books here.
As ridiculous as everything turned out to be, I actually liked Colin! I feel like as a kid, that’s who I would have connected with. Not the little girl who seems completely unappreciative that she has lived in not one, but two palaces in her young life. Not the little boy on meth. Give me the little boy who is surrounded by adults who lie to him and finally decides “fuck you, I’m going to walk.” That’s the narrative most young people reading YA connect to, regardless of how they grew up. It’s empowering to see a character your own age makes their own choices about their life! It’s fantastic! I was totally rooting for him…
Until he started saying some really terrible things. He was always sort of terrible, in the standard rich-kid-who-always-gets-his-
To counter this, Weatherstaff tells the story of Jem Fettleworth’s wife, who would “say th’ same thing over thousands o’ times–callin’ Jem a drunken brute,” until her husband “gave her a good hidin’.”
Colin responds “She used the wrong Magic until she made him beat her. If she’d used the right Magic and had said something nice perhaps he wouldn’t have got as drunk as a lord and perhaps–perhaps he might have bought her a new bonnet.”
EVERYONE WHO READ THIS AS A CHILD, PLEASE TELL ME YOU DID NOT INTERNALIZE THIS. Holy shit. Please tell me that you did not grow up thinking that it’s okay if someone drunkenly beats you because it is probably your fault anyway, and if you’re nice enough you could maybe squeeze a sweet hat out of it. And the worst part is everyone agrees! Ben Weatherstaff calls Colin “a clever lad” and says he’ll tell Lady Fettleworth this fantastic new theory on why her life is such garbage. How pleased she’ll be!
I think the last twenty pages or so are just about Colin’s dad thinking about returning to England from wherever else he was in Europe, but all I could think was how much I hoped his dad would come back to see a tree fall on Colin and break his legs for real.
*
I’m reading this as an adult, after having read Wuthering Heights, having met far too many women who just want to drink tea by a big window and stare out at a desolate rainy field and have a really complicated love life. I get it. But I don’t think I would have gotten it at the age of ten. I think I would have walked away feeling like a girl’s value is in how nice she is and that I was weird for being half-Indian. Even though Burnett forgets Mary, she leaves her at a time when everyone is saying how nice and agreeable and pretty she is, and what an improvement that is over her being too skinny and talking back to everyone. Meanwhile, Colin talks back constantly and everyone praises him for how much energy he has.
Or maybe I would have been too confused by Dickon’s accent to read more than 50 pages.
Anyway, what should I read next?
Tags: colonialism, fuck you i’m going to walk, heathcliff it’s me it’s cathy i’ve come home i’m so cold, jaya catches up, jaya saxena, secrets, summer reading, the secret garden, wuthering heights
I watched some Hallmark Channel adaptation of this movie until I basically became the movie, and the magical thinking aspect never rubbed off. Mostly the lessons I learned were that gardening was the most important thing in life and the moors are wind.
I re-read the book when I first got my kindle and it was free, and I read some internet article about how the author was a Christian Scientist and the book is basically Christian Science propaganda about how doctors are evil.
Omg there is so much weird stuff about medicine! I mean it’s basically all about how nature and Magic cures you, but I feel like Colin is a very specific instance and there are all these sweeping generalizations like “and that’s why weeding cures jaundice.”
“The Secret Garden is a pleasant book about a bunch of racists who are convinced that living in the windy moors of England somehow cures disease.” – this is when I wanted Jaya to do this for literally every YA book she missed.
Seriously, this is why I read The Toast.
Also, this:
“Maybe this is why I couldn’t get into these books when I was a kid. I lived in New York City with a mural that said ‘Crack is Wack’ up the street from my apartment. I did not have time to read about a little girl who managed to finish an entire bowl of porridge.”
That was the one that made me snort.
Also, Dickon was so, so hot in the 1993 film adaptation, and I would have bought him ALL THE METH HE WANTED.
There was a TV movie version in 1987 and Colin Firth plays Adult Colin Craven. In a British army uniform. He’s only in the movie for about 2 minutes at the end, but his mere presence makes it the best version ever.
Is that the version where Colin and Dickon are going off to fight in WWI? And someone gets with grown-up Mary? Because I swear I thought that happened in some version and then everyone disagreed with me and I thought I had dreamed it or something.
Yes, Dickon died in the war so Mary winds up with Colin in that movie.
Wait, what? Did this girl not meet any other men in her whole life except her cousin and a Magical Mystery Boy?
That’s the version I grew up with, so when someone introduced me to the apparently much more popular 1993 version, I was so confused. No Colin Firth? No thanks.
Hell yes, Nicole! I love that movie. Dickon was so hot to young me.
I feel like it’s important that you know that 1993 movie Dickon grew up to be totally hot and also in The History Boys, which is excellent!
I HAD SUCH A CRUSH ON THAT DICKON.
I still, whenever a tree branch is cracked and it’s green inside, will explain to everyone that it’s wick. Or something.
Also, copying Martha’s accent was my first foray into pretending to be British. I asked everyone I knew if they wanted a chocolate. I think she asks Mary that once.
THIS RIGHT HERE. Oh man, what a delightful thing. Do…Black Beauty next? IDK, I never read any of them either. I got a hold of Bless the Child at approximately age 8, & was only interested in material with scenes of gruesome torture and erotic massage after that.
DEFINITELY Black Beauty, it is something else. Really, it is. I read it in a long line of horsey books and it was quite a different tale than “Misty” and “The Black Stallion.”
The only acceptable Secret Garden is the 93 version, which is beautiful and has a score consisting solely of various versions of “Winter Light” by Linda Ronstadt, and um, I own it on dvd in a combo pack with The Little Princess and I love it so much.
Feelings. I have them.
(Also the guy who played Lord Craven in that movie was hot. I was a shallow child, and I am now a shallow adult.)
DID YOU KNOW that Colin in that version is now a BBC comedian who plays pranks on politicians in a show called The Revolution Will be Televised? He tried to erect a stained glass window in Tony Blair’s house, and he got pretty far.
NO. This is exciting news.
No! The Secret Garden BBC mini series from 1975 is EQUALLY as awesome even though it’s super sketchy 1975 BBC and looks like a bad soap opera in terms of film quality. It has a distinct lack of hot people, though.
It opens with a gorgeous oboe number. The music is excellent.
Ummm, yes, with the Dowager Countess Violet from DA! Best version.
It definitely made me obssesed with Maggie Smith from a young age. Also, I get so excited when I watch Gavin & Stacey and The History Boys because Dickon is in them.
Every SINGLE time I hear the name ‘Maggie Smith’ I get a picture image of the scene at the end where they’re all running out to the garden, with her at the front.
Also, I was 10 when the movie came out and my least-favourite aunt took me to see it, and she had a CAR PHONE and I got to call my parents on her CAR PHONE. So obviously that makes the movie way cooler.
Raggedy Katherine Hepburn ahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Also the Wuthering Heights tag.
If this can just be a series about how romanticizing some of these books is deeply, deeply fucked that would be great thanks.
I just saw the Wuthering tag and I might have barked like a seal when I read it. Might.
LET’S ALL REWATCH NOEL FIELDING’S VERSION OF WUTHERING HEIGHTS FOR THE NINTH TIME TODAY
That thing, is the greatest thing that happened to British TV since Robert Webb’s Flashdance.
Oh my shitting god, how did I not know that this existed? AS IF IT WERE POSSIBLE FOR ME TO LOVE YOU MORE, MELIS.
I have decided that if/when I have a kid, we will be doing none of this Classic Children’s Literature bullshit. Why yes I *did* internalize that girls have to be super nice all the time.
Wow, that was such a foundational part of my personality that I had to un-do when, I don’t know, I WENT TO LAW SCHOOL. Fuck you, parents who thought it was quaint and adorable that we all read classic literature about girls being sweet.
To be honest, I completely missed that whole message in the Secret Garden. I think I mostly liked the first bit where she’s sour and bitter and is proven right because all the happy jolly children are miserable idiots anyway. I think the main message I got was, exploring places by yourself is heaps of fun, find a couple of people who you can put up with and then only ever talk to them because everyone else is stupid. Oh, and finish your porridge.
“Finish your porridge” = what I will say instead of “fuck you” the next time I get mad at someone, hopefully at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel while wearing shorts.
I suggest ‘Heidi’ – it’s also got the “fresh air cures everything” plot going on. Also goats.
I really liked Burnett’s books as a kid. I don’t know if I can handle a sober adult takedown of ‘A Little Princess’ – that story got me through tough childhood times (although, yeah, it’s all kinds of racist, damnit).
Yes Heidi!! I was extremely fascinated when her grandfather toasted cheese over the fire because I couldn’t figure out how that worked.
My grandmother gave me a set of all three (Garden, Princess, “Little Lord Fauntleroy”); “A Little Princess” has gotten me through tough childhood AND adult times. It’s still my go-to when shit is going down, because maybe, just maybe, I’ll wake up and my garrett will be decorated.
Yes and that is why I need, need with all my soul, a sober adult takedown. I don’t have an emotional connection to Princess, but I do for a few others, and I want Jaya to smash all of the idols in a satisfying/uncomfortable way. RAGGEDY KATHERINE HEPBURN THEM ALL!
Last year, a few weeks before the anniversary of my father’s death, I thought ‘I need a nice comforting read. I know! The Little Princess!’
NO! THAT IS THE INCORRECT ANSWER! HER FATHER DIES AND LEAVES HER ALL ALONE FOREVER WITH AWFUL PEOPLE that was not the correct book to read.
This is wonderful, and makes me feel so much better about never having finished the book! My mom started reading it to me when I was 7, but I made her stop because I was SOOOO worried about the kids getting in trouble for their garden visits… even though I had already seen the 1993 movie and knew that everything turned out okay. I was an anxious and very rule-abiding child.
I once sobbed my way through Jake Gyllenhaal working in the coal mine in October Sky – “But MOM will he EVER get OUT of the MINE”
“Yes, Polka_Stripes, that’s the point of the story”
(continues sobbing until he does, indeed get out of the mine)
Also a very anxious child.
I recently have realised that I get very very anxious whenever people are in a place where they shouldn’t be.
This makes most tv shows, movies and books very difficult.
Oh man what a fantastic idea for a series! I never read Anne of Green Gables either, so I look forward to that one.
I definitely read the first book, because I remember a couple of particular scenes but I also remember not really being into it and I’ve never admitted that until now because my friends might actually physically hurt me if they knew.
3 things: One, ‘Raggedy Katherine Hepburn’ is now my Fall Look. Two, this is WONDERFUL, can we have the Moonstone sometime please? Three, I am very worried that this will end in tears with me clutching My Friend Flicka and shouting “STAY AWAY FROM MY BESTEST BOOK” which, story of my childhood actually I guess.
OH MY GOD I had completely forgotten about My Friend Flicka and now I am having flashbacks. I was not at all a horse girl but oh man that book. Did you read the sequels?
I wonder why that one has been left in my childhood but others, like the Little House series and Narnia, have made it out with me? Huh.
I loved this, but I am torn between suggesting other childhood favourites of mine so Jaya can recap them in the same amazing way, and hiding all of my favourite books so I am never reminded that they’re actually awful and super racist.
Exactly. I’m dithering between wanting to read Jaya’s Anne of Green Gables recap, and cringing every time they talk about missions for the “godless heathen” and poor treatment of the French-Canadian servants.
I’m really nervous about recommending ANYTHING I read and loved as a child for this same reason! Eek, AoGG, so nervous for that. I am looking forward to the Little Women rundown though, because I hated it as a child and felt similarly when I reread it last year…
I am waiting with baited breath for A Little Princess. Another book that my future hypothetical may-not-ever-exist child will never be subjected to. “Here, kid, have a fancy doll, go to boarding school, speak French, and then put up with horrible abuse because you have dignity.” NO. NO NO NO NO NO.
At least the dad in the A Little Princess movie was hot. And the dad went on to become DAVOS SEAWORTH. Dreams do come true…?
OMG I NEVER KNEW THIS. I always thought the dad was super hot, and I never realized it was Liam Cunningham until just now!! Ahhhhhhh
I know. It was an amazing realization. Ser Davos can pretend to be my Daddy anytime. Yeah- I went there.
I reread Redwall last year and I actually physically threw the book out because I just couldn’t deal with how racist and awful it was. So upsetting. I LOVED those books as a kid!
And they were definitely written recently enough that there is no excuse, either.
UGH, the Redwall books. I read SO many of them as a kid, and it took me way too long to realize they were all racism and anagrams.
Oh, and food.
I suggest ‘Heidi’ – it’s also got the “fresh air cures everything” plot going on. Also goats.
Guess what, I’m too dim for your fancy new comment system .aaghghghg
It wants to moderate everything!! I had to moderate one of MY OWN COMMENTS this morning.
Are you sure that wasn’t actually a very sly piece of performance art?
Oh man actual book recommendation: Black Beauty, which as a Horse Girl even I was like “who the fuck likes this boring-ass horse book?”
Omg I am such a horse girl. That will be an interesting one!
I was not a horse girl. And read Black Beauty until the cover fell off.
maybe that’s the secret to Black Beauty.
I think that must be it, because I was also not a horse girl and yet was so moved by Black Beauty that I carry a grudge against city carriage drivers to this day. Why are you so mean to Beauty! Stop being so mean, carriage driver!
I was deep in the throes of my short-lived horse passion when I read that and the whole time nine year-old me was like, “I think I’m supposed to like this but I don’t is there something wrong with me” but I never would’ve vocalized that fear because A) WHAT IF SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH ME and B) maybe someone could’ve told me it was ok to dislike things that are “classics” and that it didn’t mean I wasn’t smart enough to get it so I wouldn’t have gotten to unlearn that in my adult life.
Black Beauty was the first book I remember guilt reading because it was supposed to be a classic. My only memory of it is of lying in bed staring at the page and wondering when it would be over.
Still learning that lesson.
I was a Horse Girl and I read it until my copy fell apart and that was before I found out that its publication actually helped spur protections for horses and some very early animal rights campaigns: http://www.npr.org/2012/11/02/163971063/how-black…
Tremendous! I was a bookish child who always secretly thought that this book was bo-ring, but also felt weirdly pressured to be into it? Give me “A Little Princess” and the detailed descriptions of gowns over the nature moors any day. Also, I do NOT remember the Magic-abuse section. Whaaaaaa?
I would really love to hear your take on “Anne of Green Gables,” but kind of don’t want to subject you to that thing. It is looooong.
I loved Anne of Green Gables as a kid, but I re-read the first few last year and she is so obsessed with her looks, it kind of overshadows how good the rest of the book is.
I totally give Anne a pass on being obsessed with her looks, because for the first 11 years of her life, all she’s ever heard is how ugly, skinny, red-headed (i.e., ugly) and useless she is. That’s enough to give anyone a complex.
Poor ginger. Yeah, I re-read Anne of Green Gables a few years ago and didn’t mind her obsession with her looks. I thought the book was pretty cute. JAYA! TIME TO WRITE A REVIEW!
I get kind of annoyed when she starts to be less awkward-looking and the book is all “LOOK AT HER BEAUTY NOW” about it. I just remember some description that was like “the other girls were plumper and more pleasant, but Anne had a more pleasing figure and starrier eyes, and SHE IS THE BEST ONE, YOU GUYS.”
I do dig that she’s a smart girl who isn’t afraid to be smart and that her rivalry with Gilbert Blythe is intellectual. Dammit, I like it. Recommended!
Anne was the best because she had more inner beauty – her looks were not considered pretty in her era (even her being slim was not ideal in late-19th-century Canada) but she had imagination and spirit and amazing brains and heart, and was a good friend.
“Love Letter to Anne Shirley” by Bittersweet.
Everyone is saying Black Beauty but I have been haunted by “Ginger’s tongue slowly dropping with blood” since I was eight and I don’t want ever really to think about it again.
Yeah, I’ve always wondered why people thought that book was appropriate for young kids. So damn depressing.
When I was a kid, my mom read a bunch of somewhat oddly-chosen chapter books into a tape recorder, so that my sister and I could listen to them instead of having friends. So, I heard a lot of Secret Garden growing up, including my mother’s baffling interpretation of the “broad Yorkshire” accent. Seeing it written down, I guess she did the best she could with what she got, though. “Racists in a remote location” was an extremely popular theme to the homemade collection of books on tape, but I think it was also the dominant theme in children’s literature for like 100 years.
How/why are we sitting here on our Macbook Airs (or whatever) as grown-ass lady feminists and somehow we all managed to be subjected to classic children’s literature in the vein of “Racists in Remote Locations” (TM)? I always thought I was weird because none of my high school friends read this stuff and BOOM now I’m on the internet at age 26 and I have found my people?
Where were you guys in elementary school when I was a huge dork and read ‘The Secret Garden’ and other classic literature for small obedient white girls?
Madam, I am typing this on a calculator I got free with a tank of gas, and you are an elitist! (Sike.) I think that there are a lot of young people who got the hard sell on the Magic of the Library in the last few years before libraries got the memo that other media existed besides public domain books and scratched LPs. There is no frigate like a book. The frigate will sail you to a remote location, where you can party with some racists. There may be horses.
<3 u frenzie, this comment is hilarious and awesome.
This is an excellent point. I now want to go ask my librarian friends about trends in children’s literature, since my mom and her siblings seemed to read 1950s-specific children’s books that lived in my grandparents’ basement forever. I read them during summer trips to the grandparents house (for the record, I remember a series called The Happy Hollisters and they made the Brady Bunch look like serial killers).
Did something happen in the 70s or 80s when librarians went from “here, have some books that are relevant to your life!” to “CLASSICS, CHILDREN! SOAK UP THE IMPERIALISM!”? I want to know.
I also definitely read The Babysitters Club and Judy Blume and stuff, but it was understood that it came with familial scorn or deep suspicion. I think it also has to do with what raises red flags are far as objectionable content. Like, casual or explicit racism raises eyebrows now in a way that it seemingly did not raise my parents’ generation’s eyebrows, but unpunished teen sexual activity in literature was a huge problem.
That’s really interesting. Hmm. Yes. I don’t even necessarily think a lot of readers-turned-parents/librarians were picking up on the thinly veiled racism and ridiculous classism, or if they were it wasn’t really something to be alarmed by. I definitely sense a cultural shift from “that’s how things were” to “yeah, this is racist, let’s not decide this is the pinacle of children’s literature.”
I sensed more of a “serious lit” vs “trashy beach reading lit” vibe as a kid, but definitely lacked the ability to say “excuse me, I am reading, do you really care what I’m reading? Be happy I’m not watching TV.” There was something that was affirmatively good about The Secret Garden and its ilk — something wholesome and boring and completely irrelevant to the lives of most modern children.
This still kind of happens now. Librarians have dozens of young patrons they introduce the newest, most relevant books to, but each young patron has dozens of adult family members saying, “I remembered loving this book!”.
I always forget about the magical thinking bits of Secret Garden and mostly remember Dickon cooking things in his weirdo little oven.
holy shit The Happy Hollisters. those books are ridiculous. If we’re talking about Kids Solving Mysteries, the Boxcar Children was far superior, at least in my nostalgic mind. They’re probably super racist and terrible too, though.
So true! This whole thread is why I love the internet. I’ve never met so many people who read and loved the same books I did. And “classic literature for small obedient white girls” is the perfect description. Except I was a small obedient brown girl growing up in India.
COOL! What did you think of The Little Princess and The Secret Garden with their “tiny white rich girl moves from India to England, has fancypants experiences, develops daddy issues” plots? Do you think your interpretation was different? TELL US!
I don’t think my interpretation then was any different from anyone else’s, because I had a fairly privileged childhood, and I mostly identified with the obedient girl characters. It’s only a bit later that I started to even think about how racist/sexist/awful most of these books were, and I think I am a lot more forgiving about them because they were the products of their time. I also haven’t re-read most of these books since I’ve become an adult, so I’m looking forward to what Jaya will have to say about them.
SO RELIEVED to hear this. I unironically loved the hell out of a lot of books with racist/sexist bullshit in them, and I think my little child brain just skimmed right the hell past that stuff and into the extended descriptions of beautiful gardens and houses and knick-knacks, and hilarious conversational exchanges. It terrified me to think my childhood self was supposed to be all, “this shit is hella racist” and throw the book across the room.
I did think Mary was an asshole to her Ayah (Ayuh? however it was spelled?) but I did not really pick up on the fact that it was for racist reasons. I just thought she was a self-entitled little brat who was mean to servants, and I was pleased for Martha that she was not having any of that shit.
I definitely didn’t think “wow, totally racist” except when Mary threw a fit because Martha thought she would be Indian, and then I was like “I don’t know why I’m uncomfortable but okay, carry on with the story!” I generally disliked Mary a LOT and thought she was sort of a turd face.
I’m also not white and loved a lot of those books and re-read TSG a lot. I do remember disliking her being an asshole to her Amah. It’s been awhile since I read it so I can’t be sure about the racist parts, but at least when she is being a racist the reader by and large realizes she’s being an asshole?
Also I don’t jive with the commentary about being a little jerk who can’t appreciate having lived in two palaces. What do palaces matter when you’re a little kid whose parents and family ignores you and then they die? She never had any friends and she had a shitty childhood. Finally she gets over being a sour faced spoiled kid when she makes friends with a servant’s kids.
Man, I’m realising how much I loved that Mary was sour and bitter. Wth, child me? I mean, I didn’t like her being a jerk but I liked the start where she was not nice. And I guess I didn’t mind the getting-nicer plot because it was because people were nice to her? And she started getting what she needed and was happier within herself? I mean mostly I felt sad that Martha is basically the first person who’s ever talked to her like a person. (ALERT FOR CLASSISM and Martha not being a ‘proper’ servant cos she’s too open and nice and ‘simple’ etc). But I would need to reread it again because I wonder what I was picking up on and what I didn’t see very clearly.
I know, for instance, that I ATE UP all the ‘magical nature’ stuff but, even as a very small child I rolled my eyes at the Secret stuff, like oh yeah, children playing games ok whatever. I remember skimming the last 1/4 of the book every time I read it.
Also, this was brilliant, obviously, although I love The Secret Garden, and I had forgotten the wife-beating and the racist parts. Ish.
ok but the Kate Bush lyric tag YES.
I don’t remember reading this book as a kid (although I did and still have my copy) but I have watched the 1993 film version approx. 800 times.
I vote for Jaya reading The Swiss Family Robinson. Because what even is that book.
No one knows you are a girl if SHORT HAIR
Oh, my goodness, I hope this series is long-lived and fruitful. Go Jaya Go! So excited for your Anne of Green Gables, whenever you get around to it!
Yes! “Anne of Green Gables is a lovely book about Canadians who hate gingers but love puffed sleeves.”
My nostalgia feels violated.
Also, other books that deliver a moral lesson on wholesome, healthful living over sophistication:
Eight Cousins – Louisa May Alcott
An Old-Fashioned Girl – Louisa May Alcott
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – Kate Douglas Wiggin
A Girl of the Limberlost – Gene Stratton-Porter
omg, Rebecca! You saying that just now jolted in my memory that Rebecca and Anne are not the same person, which in my head they were totally just smushed together from years of nostalgia.
An Old-Fashioned Girl was basically my favorite Alcott book ever, and I never understood why no one else knew of it. Though the last time I read it, wen I was 14 or so, I started to get a little WTF about “oh, how much better being country and old-fashioned is!” because clearly city life was rockin’.
Of all of LMA’s morality ladytales, Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom are the best. Simply because Mac is a such a dreamboat, even though Rose is a bit of a simpering dweeb.
Somehow I never got into the Anne series but I LOVED the Story Girl? I should reread that.
Also I grew up in the country and totally was confused by all the ‘simple living’ stuff because all the more modern stuff I read was about needing to get out of small towns, and longing for excitement, etc.
Seconding Anne of Green Gables (though I want you to read them ALL even the one about her daughter who marries a guy too old for her) and Wrinkle in Time. Also did anyone else read Five Children and It? I loved that.
Five Children and It! I love E. Nesbit, and haven’t given up hope trying to convince my daughter that she needs to read those books.
But what is this about Anne’s daughter marrying a guy too old for her? If you’re talking about Rilla and Kenneth Ford, take it back right now. They are perfect together.
I dunno man. I read Rilla of Ingleside when I was 11ish and she starts out as 15 and has a crush on a guy who is what, 22? And it struck me then AND now as VASTLY INAPPROPRIATE that he would end up in love with her at the end, even though she is basically an adult by then, because the last time they hung out she was still jailbait.
I do love how all the kids in those books married each other, like obviously thaey would have to, there’s no one else in Canada anywhere!
Yes, by my calculation they’re about 7 years apart in age. And yes, she’s 15 when she first crushes on him, but they do meet again before he ships overseas, when she’s 17 and taking care of the war orphan. And thus older.
And remember that back then, girls generally married younger. Mrs. Lynde says she was 18 when she married, Diana was considered older when she married at 21, and Anne was practically an old maid to marry Gilbert at 25. So I’ve got no problem with them marrying at 26 and 19, respectively.
And “all the kids…married each other”? I count 3 marriages – Jem and Faith, Nan and Jerry, Rilla and Ken (who was technically from Toronto, not really from Four Winds). Obviously the others married elsewhere…except poor Walter.
Wow, I had no idea I felt so strongly about this. Or had even thought about it that much.
Yeah, I did not have that kind of broad thinking/cultural context when I read the book and was more like “what the hell, man, date someone your own age.” Unwilling to reevaluate because it STILL SEEMS WEIRD.
Uma WOULD have married Walter if he hadn’t spoilered, so that’s all the Meredith children accounted for, and only Di, Shirley, and Persis left over. How great of a name is Persis, by the way? Love it.
I am spending this afternoon looking up Anne Shirley things on Wikipedia. Hooray!
You are forgetting Carl Meredith, the bug lover. He lost an eye in the war, but “one eye was good enough to watch bugs with.”
The other thing to remember about that time and place was that people didn’t move around as much then as they do now, so most people married someone from their village or the one next door and settled on the farm portion someone’s dad gave them. So moving off to Toronto or Boston was a big deal. Marilla and Mrs. Lynde even remark on it before Anne gets married, since a few of Anne’s besties can’t make the wedding since they’re halfway around the world.
“Isn’t it terrible, the way people get scattered around the globe?” said Anne. “The Lord never intended it, that’s what,” said Mrs. Lynde.
I love the name Persis a lot. No clue what happens to her in the books. Wish I could look up Anne Shirley things on Wikipedia with you! Enjoy.
I DID forget Carl! I’m sorry Carl! I hate your bugs.
Haha, I hate Carl’s bugs too, especially in The Rainbow Valley when he is always bringing centipedes and other nasties to the dinner table.
I was 24 when I married my 37 year old. I got together with him when I was 17. (16 is age of consent in the UK).
I would still genuinely advise people that 99% of men who want to date significantly younger should be avoided. But that 1% lead to happy, healthy, respectful, equal relationships that outlast all the naysayers.
Just… you don’t have to stop thinking it’s weird if that’s your instinctive reaction, but it does get wearing to hear CONSTANTLY how the love of my life is weird, immature or potenially a pedophile. Heads up.
Cannot get over that that wifebeating bit is in there, and that I missed it in several re-readings, including some where I was like way past the age where that should have raised some alarm bells. Please do one of these for every children’s book ever. Except A Little Princess, because I loved that book way more than The Secret Garden and after this I think I’d rather stay ignorant of whatever crazy shit is in that one.
I seriously remembered that scene and did not remember the wife-beating bit. I interpreted it more as “don’t be an asshole to people and they won’t be an asshole to you.” Obviously there are some problems with that interpretation when one method of assholery is verbal abuse and the other method is physical (and clearly HER FAULT) but I guess good job, young me, for taking an interpretation that wasn’t going to cause serious problems in your relationships in adult life, even if it missed the whole problem there?
This was perfect.
I also feel left out because I didn’t read the classics, instead reading a bunch of sci-fi and fantasy, but I feel so much better now. Glad to have missed the racism and misogyny in The Secret Garden.
What about Alice in Wonderland next?
Can you read Ender’s Game? Because I read it for the first time earlier this year and HATED IT. Maybe if I’d read it as a child I’d have liked it better, but I just thought it was totally wack. Has anyone read it as an adult and liked it?
Um YES. I read it earlier this year as well which was totally Mallory & Jia’s fault – so, if you want their opinions on reading it as adults, go find their Twitter/Tumblr pages because it was HILARIOUS. I really really enjoyed it though… I thought I would have the same “maybe if I read it when I was a kid” reaction but idk man, apparently calling people farts never gets old.
ETA: my favorite part of their reviews was this from Mallory (Mallory I will never forget this because it was a perfect description of everything that I DIDN’T like about the book):
“Your brother hates you because you’re proof he wasn’t good enough” OSC must have contentedly checked off “characterization” after that line
Like just checked it with a big fuckin quill pen. “Got that taken care of”
I tried to read it a couple of years ago and absolutely hated it. I thought I was the only one! Everyone on earth seems to love it and I just don’t get it! Like, there was some questionable stuff in there, but mostly it was just boring. I feel like an alien when people gush about Ender’s Game.
I felt like this about Dune. Like, I liked it ok but also it was pretty boring? I guess I am not a 12 year old boy who wants to be whatever the main character’s name was? See, that’s how much I care about that.
Oh wowwww wow wow wow I laughed so hard at Dickon on meth. I EAT ONE PIECE OF TOAST PER DAY! Also, I think of myself as well-read? And I spent a LOT of my childhood reading? But I never read The Secret Garden or A Little Princess or Anne of Green Gables, so these are going to be reeeeeeally helpful columns when these books come up at my Nostalgics, Inc. meetings.
Oh right right and please tear into a Nancy Drew book? Classic Nancy or a super cool Nancy Does the 90s? I have to thank Nancy Drew for teaching me what an on-again off-again boyfriend is and disappointing me that it’s not actually a native feature built into most significant others.
Oh my god, Nancy! I loved those books so much! But they are pretty terrible! But I will continue to love them anyway.
Oooh, I’d like to put Island of the Blue Dolphins in the running. My fifth grade teacher was obsessed with it and he read it to us every day after lunch.
We read that in 5th grade as well! And um, watched some sort of made-for-tv or even straight-to-video miniseries that accompanied it? Anyone?
I read a lot of that kind of book as a kid. It was like YA survivalist kind of stuff. I’m thinking Gary Paulsen and Scott O’Dell worked together to get both the boy side and the girl side of that sub-genre. I loved that shit when I was a kid, and Hatchet holds up surprisingly well. But it was really just about kids building stuff in various situations.
My Side of the Mountain, yo! I wanted to live in a tree.
OH MAN THAT BOOK IS SO GREAT.
Yes! Seconded! Upvoted! Whatever parlance we’re going to use here. “All alone on this island…but on the bright side, think of all the feather skirts and bone jewelry I can make.”
island of the blue dolphinnnnnnnsssssss! That is all.
I seriously reread that book a million times. I (partly) blame my obsession with “what will I do if I am lost on an island/in the woods/etc.” on it!. (The other book to blame is Hatchet, of course.)
This is brilliant. Especially ending with your description of:
“…women who just want to drink tea by a big window and stare out at a desolate rainy field and have a really complicated love life.”
TRUE TYPE
Me in college. Right there. Mount Holyoke College, Stimson poetry room, at the large window overlooking the academic green, Earl Grey tea, no girlfriend.
I love this series because I never read the books but certainly watched the 90’s movies over and over and over (The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, Anne of Green Gables (and then of course the Canadian Avonelea TV shows…)).
Marmie is so preachy in Little Women, I’d love to see Jaya do that one!
OHHH The Wizard of Oz – so much scarier than the movie!
terrifying creatures. terrifying.
“Little Women,” yes, please!
I am the only person who ever read What Katy Did, which is a book about how if you are a bad child, you will fall off a swing and break your back and be an invalid for 5 years and then emerge as the nicest, most good girl ever?
I have read EVERY Katy book and they start off SO WELL, with naughtiness and scrambling about, and then boom, invalid, angel in the house, everything is ruined. But in later books she does put on an Irish accent quite a lot of the time.
I read What Katy Did at school a bunch and then sort of recently read What Katy Did Next where she goes on a European tour…are there others? I don’t remember an Irish accent.
There are two more. Clover, about Clover going to visit Phil, and then In the High Valley, which is all about married lives.
Whoa, there are more? I can’t decide if my life just got better or worse.
Yes yes yes to the extremely-inappropriate-for-children Black Beauty and the early, deeply racist/classist Nancy Drew books!
OMG the magical thinking in kids’ books!
Pollyanna is another one, like The Secret Garden and even Anne of Green Gables (in some ways) to promote “if you just insist on thinking/acting happy thoughts, you will be!”
Yeah, I internalized that and at the same time was internalizing religious fire and brimstone talk (that I’m a sinner who is evil and black and deserves nothing more than death – you know, the usual), which led to a lot of guilt and trying to fake being Good and happy, then guilt that I was lying to everyone. A+ for a screwed up childhood education!
Anyway, I only read this book like 3 times because of the garden parts. The rest of it was super boring. The Little Princess was better, and Louisa Alcott’s books were even better than Burnett’s. I loved the one about the country girl going to the city so much that I maybe stole the book from my classroom. (But I was the only one who had read it in YEARS so I don’t think anyone cared. I hope.)
Polyanna, good lord. I hated that book. THE GLAD GAME! Shut up, Pollyanna, you know you just wanted a doll and adventure, stop trying to be the poster child for the fucking patriarchy.
I remember HATING Watership Down [ducks, hides] and would love to read Jaya going after it for being the worstttttttttttt.
everyone talks about how terrifying the Watership Down movie is, but the book is equally terrifying. and also a little bit boring because it’s so dense. but terrifying.
i don’t know how i got through the thing (i could never manage to watch the movie, even though my cousin had it playing several times when i was at his house)
My sole takeaway from Watership Down was that female rabbits can just, like, re-absorb their unborn fetuses into their bodies if there’s not enough food for new babies, and even at the age of 12 I was like, seriously, human evolution, you need some of that.
THIS IS A GOOD TAKEAWAY FROM A GOOD BOOK
no seriously the rabbit mythology and the adventures and the gassing of rabbits and the wild-ization of hutch rabbits and everything!!!!
Jaya you should read this too, I think is my conclusion. So good! I loved it! I want to hear it love/hated!
It is one of the greatest books of all time, you wang.
Cosigned.
The most important thing I took out of this book (movie? both?) is that if you cut into a seemingly dead branch and it’s still green inside that means it’s alive! I used to go around outside and break tiny little limbs off bushes and trees all winter just to check and make sure they’d be back come spring.
Oh good. I wasn’t the only one.
Oh, me too. I also yelled “It’s wick!” because that’s what Dickon said and I was all about using new words. That is pretty much all I took away from The Secret Garden.
The Giver is still pretty much my favorite book ever. Tuck Everlasting is another good one, in the more “classic” vein, as is Oliver Twist. A Wrinkle in Time is darling, and Ender’s Game is another one of my favorite books ever.
YA literature is pretty much the reason I became a middle school teacher, though I definitely stick with slightly more recently written books than The Secret Garden. Happy reading!
The Giver is in fact the greatest book ever written.
OLIVER TWIST! I love Oliver Twist.
Tuck Everlasting is brilliant and I love it, especially because of the ending (I approve so hard, as I did as a child, even though allllllll of my friends were very HOW COULD SHE?! but of course she did, she made the correctest choice of them all!)
/very hard to avoid spoilers here, alas.
Did any Americans read The famous Five? Definitely some troubling stuff in there about young George, who thinks she’s as good as a boy (but obviously she’s not, because VAG.)
I used to think her name was Gnid Blyton, because of the font used to write her name on the books. My favourite used to be The Five Find-Outers. All female characters in her books were either tomboys, or super girly and weak.
We had them on account of living in An Idyllic Little English Village. Well, my parents still have them on the shelf downstairs at their place.
I’ll just say, you can make those books hilariously creepy by reading them in Double Entendre Voice. Five Go To Billycock Hill? I mean… c’mon.
I vote:
Little House on the Prairie, The Egypt Game, and Anne of Green Gables.
Ooh! “I AM JUST AS GOOD AS ANY BOY” exclaimed George before tucking into rock cakes, scones, gooseberry fool and other English foods we don’t have here.
I read every single book Enid Blyton wrote and loved all of them, but wooooow there are some awful things in her books. Like the one that is basically about how travellers are wicked and will steal your children :|. Having said that, did you ever read The Enchanted Forest/The Magic Faraway Tree? Because I have never been able to find an explanation for those that doesn’t involve heavy drug use…
I can’t believe the timing – Hark! A Vagrant’s most recent comic is also about A Secret Garden.
http://harkavagrant.com/
Magic!
There is a book called (I think) Six Little Australians that I really, really, really need to talk to somebody about, because it is so brilliant and also the most depressing.
Seven Little Australians.
I tried reading it as a kid and was not successful – didn’t make it past the first chapter. None of it made sense to me because I was like 8 years old and had no idea what anyone was talking about.
Making a mental note to get on that now that I’m a bit older!
Oh my god.
I actually did a little gulp hiccup when I read that title and now I am about to cry. That book seriously traumatised me.
My copy is in Dubai, so I can’t get to it right now. But I would read it again. Judy. JUDY. FIZZ. “She affected an Irish brogue on occasion for some occult reason of her own” and THEN. And THEN. I’m far too emotional right now to think about it.
I laughed so loud I scared my cat. Well done.
All my memories of the book have been overwritten by the 93 movie, which as has been discussed, is amazing. And from this synopsis, probably improves upon the source material.
I was trying to find the 93 movie on Netflix and, blasphemy of blashphemies, it’s not available, but there is a movie called Secret Garden described as: “A wealthy man and a poor stunt girl fall in love. But things get complicated when their souls become inexplicably swapped and dark secrets surface.” I might just watch that instead.
If you happen to be in Target, look for a double-feature disc with The Secret Garden and A Little Princess on it. Then do a happy dance and embarrass your boyfriend in public when you find it and it’s only five dollars.
This pleases me and now I have a reason to trek to Target!
Little Women!
Sadly this book shaped my romantic preferences.
Sadly my romantic preferences aren’t for Laurie-types but for Prof. Bhaer-types.
When I read it (so, so many times) as a kid, I was like, “What?! Laurie was RIGHT THERE, dumbass,” as we all were, presumably. But then I grew up and married my Prof. Bhaer and now I get it, Louisa. Now I get it.
I just lost my Prof Bhaer, so I am wishing I had more Lauries in my youth…
Have you read any of the recent bios?
🙁 So sorry to hear that.
I have not read any biographies of her ever, which I should rectify immediately. What should I start with?
And yes, lots of Lauries for everyone in youth! But turn in your extra Lauries in when you turn 22; they’ll be very happy together on their Lauriefarm.
I read Susan Cheever’s simply titled “Louisa May Alcott” a couple of years ago over Christmas vacation – the perfect Christmas read! I have “Marmee and Louisa” by Eve LaPlante on my bookshelf. She’s the great-niece of Alcott’s cousin, and discovered some letters and other personal paper in her attic that were thought to have been lost or destroyed. !!! Can you imagine finding that in your attic?! This is why it sucks that I don’t have an attic.
I now have an image in my head of a bunch of Lauries (as played by Douglass Montgomery in the 1933 Katherine Hepburn as Jo version; not Christian Bale, terrible Laurie – couldn’t they have at least dyed his hair?!) lounging around on a resort-like desert island, smoking cigars and playing pianos on the beach…
I just started reading Matilda by Roald Dahl for the first time and I’m enjoying it.
…glad to be reading a book of his as an adult because I don’t think I would’ve appreciated a lot of the wit as a 9-year-old.
Matilda is straight-up my model for how one should handle emotional/verbal abuse. Be calm and sweet to their face, get mad privately, seek untraceable revenge, be sweet to their faces when it goes down.
Man, I tried reading that a little while ago and just got too upset about how it’s like ‘Miss Trunchball is evil, and we know because she’s super fat, just like Matilda’s parents. Oh and they are mean. While being fat. But Miss Honey is thin! Thin and beautiful and meek! So she’s good! So lovely and good and thin!’
I was very sad because I just loved that book as a kid and I don’t think I can ever read it again.
I dunno when I’m drunk as a lord I tend to just buy my wife all the bonnets she wants. That’s why I have no money three days before payday.
Okay, did anyone read Searching for Shona as a child, perhaps around fourth grade? Set around WWII where two girls who look alike switch identities? It haunts me and my friends to this day, we were so unhappy with the ending. It would be great to get the perspective of reading it as an adult and it’s not too long. Not a classic along the lines of others, but yeah. I will send my copy (because of course I still have it/can’t get rid of it) to wherever it needs to go!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I have been trying to figure out what book that was forEVAR and you solved my life the end.
Yes, the ending! I DID NOT LIKE THE ENDING. Excuse me while I go and be highly annoyed about a book I read once twenty five years ago.
HARRIET THE SPY! Please do Harriet the Spy?
OMGGGGGG I loved Harriet the Spy so much that my sister and I took a little diary around the neighborhood and spied on people till our mom caught us and we got in, like, A LOT of trouble.
Frances Hodgson Burnett is whack, and The Secret Garden is actually her least weird/racist/aristocrat-worshipping book. I mean, A Little Princess? She’s poor, but it’s totally cool because she turns out to be a diamond mine heiress, and she takes her “friend” Becky to live with her AS HER SERVANT. And don’t get me started on Little Lord Fauntleroy.
Fwiw, Burnett totally knew exactly what she was doing! I mean, probably not so much re: the misogyny and racism, but she grew up poor in Tennessee, and supported her family by blatantly catering to the contemporary American obsession with British aristocracy and an idea of magical rustics. Little Lord Fauntleroy was one of the first books that had branded spin-off merchandise!
How about one of E.B. White’s books next? Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and Trumpet of the Swan.
Ooh, or Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH?
(I read a lot of books starring animals, apparently.)
The strongest magic in the E.B. White books is the magic of his prose. Seriously, those books could be about staring at the wallpaper and I’d be mesmerized by his sentence structure.
I read so many animal-starring books as a kid. The other ones I remember really well are the Cricket in Times Square/Tucker Mouse-Harry Cat books, and the Miss Bianca books. Perhaps because they were all (including E.B.White) illustrated by the amazing Garth Williams.
YES THE RATS OF NIMH. Which is also pretty racist, btw.
Did you ever read The Silver Crown? By the same dude and man it’s weird.
Me, upon reading the title: This is so perfect—I have A Little Princess out from the library right now as part of my efforts to fill in my kid lit gaps!
Me, upon finishing the piece: Maybe I will learn Kate Bush’s dance to Wuthering Heights instead?
If you want to read another weirdly racist British book, there’s always The Wind in the Willows.
Is that racist? Oh, nooooooo, I can’t bear this. EVERYTHING IS PROBLEMATIC.
Well, yeah, inasmuch as it’s about animals. I guess you could view it as classist as well. At one point Ratty says that the inhabitants of the Wild Woods are “all right in a way… but… well, you can’t really trust them.”
wait, really? I am getting ready to read that out loud to my kiddo. what is racist about it? I haven’t read it since I was a wee lass.
Also weirdly racist is Mary Poppins. Pretty innocuous until she takes the kids on a trip around the world and the people they meet are these awful terribly racist caricatures….helpfully, the edition I read came with drawings. Which were every bit as bad as the text.
This is very good to know, since I just started in on Mary Poppins with my kid, but he got bored and we went back to A Series of Unfortunate Events. Perhaps MP will quietly disappear from the shelf.
I will say that I read the earliest edition–supposedly she revised it to exclude some of the racism in later editions. So if you’ve got a newer edition maybe it’s better?
This made me laugh! I love The Secret Garden and have done since I was little, but completely agree about the weird discrepancies and stuff. FWIW I didn’t notice any of it until I read it again in my late teens.
Ooh, maybe the Little House on the Prairie books?
I was that kid who (despite my happy home life) always had a strange craving to pack a pillowcase and run away, so I loved reading survival stories like LHOTP and My Side of the Mountain and deconstructing what everybody ate. But I don’t remember the next several books in the series or what happened to everyone…
“The Wilder Life” by Wendy McClure is pretty fantastic when it’s not a super slow account of her driving around in South Dakota. It’s basically about her childhood obsession with the Little House books.
YES to reading Jaya’s takedown of the pig bladder balloons and the cows punching holes in the roof of a dug-into-a-hill hobbit-house-from-hell, poor Ma and the paper windows obscuring the comfortable life she could have had.
Submitted for your consideration: “The Hundred and One Dalmations” and “The Starlight Barking” by Dodie Smith.
Don’t worry, Jaya. I only had three real takeaways from this book, and it was one of my favorites as a child so I remember it better than most other books I read in the same age range!
1) I learned was a moor was
2) I realized that a Secret Garden was maybe the coolest thing of all time and I was desperate to have one and probably even asked my parents how to acquire one and DEFINITELY pretended a clearing between like three trees in our yard was one.
3) I learned in drafty old mansions in the English countryside, the sounds of screams carry well.
I literally remember nothing of fatness or drunken beatings or any of the racist stuff (I actually even forgot about the India tie-in until I started reading here!). So fear not!
I can’t wait for more of this series! Old timey YA is such weird, fertile ground.
OMG your user name
A few suggestions:
All-of-a-Kind Family (for cuteness)
Jacob Have I Loved (for intensity)
Flowers in the Attic (for trash)
Oh, god! Flowers in the Attic! That wasn’t really for kids, but we all read it anyway. So sick! I still get claustrophobic thinking of it! And remember that Italian who she thought kept saying “Die! Die!” while having sex with her?
I ADORED All-of-a-Kind Family and it led to some troubling conversations with my parents when I wanted to become Jewish so I could celebrate their holidays too. They sounded so fun!
Also I vividly remember the discussion of food: pickles in barrels, and hot nuts from street vendors, and the penny candies!
YO WE ALL NEED TO TALK ABOUT JACOB HAVE I LOVED
1) that book is WHACK as FUCK
2) it really makes me want to eat crabs
It’s the most whack whackness that ever whacked. Remember when the grandma got senile and started calling the mom a whore? In a children’s book? And young Louise fell in love with an old man? And STUPID EFFING CAROLINE??
This made me laugh so much, especially the passage on Dickon!
Please review Deenie, the book about how if your mom tries too hard to make you be a model, the universe will give her a big upraised middle finger by giving you scoliosis, and also, growing up: sucks.
The Borrowers, by Mary Norton, which may have something to do with my terrible debt and a Mcgyver-like propensity for fixing and jerry-rigging stuff.
Also, Ozma of Oz, my first trans-gender book! Frank L Baum.
Oh dear! I don’t care, I love this book. Still. I re-read it 6 months ago.
You should totally read Black Beauty, which I INHALED as a child, and is totally full of problematic English stuff to freak out about, too. It’ll be fun!
Nooooo, I was out all day and I didn’t get to ask anybody else if they were SUPER OBSESSED with the stage musical version! Which is the greatest, ESPECIALLY the original Broadway cast, because it features Mandy Patinkin as Archibald (!!!) and John Cameron Mitchell as Dickon, before he starred in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (!!!!!!!!). Also the music is gorgeous.
It might make you feel better if I tell you that I’VE NEVER KNOWN ANYONE ELSE WHO READ THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH. I remember reading the copy on the back that referred to it as a “classic” and thinking “Where? In fucking England?”
It’s a slightly older demographic, but can we talk about Summer of My German Soldier? Because I suddenly realize that it made me feel things Very Deeply and may have made me write weird dystopian not-quite-fanfic.
I read that! AND the sequel Morning is a Long Time Coming! I didn’t remember that much about them until you mentioned it but I think I even owned them and read them a few times.
I have always loved I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. She is remarkably modern in some ways, and delightfully old fashioned in others. Both my children loved The Phantom Tollbooth, it’s actually quite funny.
As for old, anti-immigrant attitudes, you can’t beat Little Women, and LM Alcott’s portrayal of German (!!!) immigrants as dirty and disease ridden . A nice change from the usual xenophobia.
I remember being really worried about Mary’s only friend being a creepy old man WHEN I WAS A CHILD (I may have been overly paranoid about getting child molested when I was a kid).
Also I’m pretty sure Mary and Colin grow up and marry each other cuz that’s how they did in those days, first cousin fucking like there was no tomorrow.
Yes but she only married him because she was overflowing with unrequited love for Dickon, who pretended not to notice and only treated her like a friend, because he was Married to the Moor (or possible gay. IDK that’s just what my brain says, WHY brain?) But at least it kept Colin in line because he couldn’t be too imperious without being compared to Dickon, which he always hated (maybe COLIN was also secretly in love with Dickon! Wait, am I writing The Secret Garden slash fic? Jesus)
I love this so, so much but if Jaya even so much as glances at Misty of Chincoteague I will throw her into the stables. Some things are SACRED.
Giiiiirl you are talking to a woman who had a shetland pony and whose grandmother was from Virginia. SACRED.
I chuckled delightedly all the way through this. I adored the secret garden as a child, but thankfully I think all I really took away from it was that if you spent lots of time with flowers and growing things and Outside in general then you would be healthy and happy. And also I learnt what cholera was.
Now I am an adult I like to terrorise other people who loved it by telling them that considering when it was set Colin and Dickon probably both went off to die in the trenches in WW1 in later life.
I think I read that book as a kid, BUT MOSTLY I listened to the audiobook version, in the form of a 5-LP set that I would play repeatedly on my Fisher-Price record player. It was obviously abridged, & they left out the parts about “the blacks” and wife-beating. Shortening this novel may have improved it in other ways, since I don’t recall the plot being as incoherent as described here. In retrospect, it is kind of cool that Mary’s bitchiness has a positive effect, since it’s what inspires Colin to stop whining and get his shit together.
As a result of listening to that record, I will have such lines as “canna’ tha’ dress thysen’?”, “I’m givin’ thee a bit o’ Yorkshire,” “I’ve got five places for every penny, but I just had to buy that child a skippin’ rope!”, “I’m glad it’s wick!” and “there isn’t a lump as big as a pin!” imprinted on my brain forever. 5 stars, highly recommended.
The strongest memory I have of this book is Colin’s fear of becoming a hunchback. At the same time, my grandmother had developed severe osteoporosis and no one bothered to tell me that nine year olds couldn’t get it.
And how did these books become the compendium of YA lit when we were kids? Did our parents all agree to carry on the traditional lit torch or were there only 10 books in the YA section of B. Dalton to choose from?
Oh please please read “Love Of Seven Dolls” by Paul Gallico. Your life is not complete until.
I’m so in love with The Toast. you are all so absolutely fantastic and funny. I haven’t read any of the classics you’re all mentioning. Maybe it was the growing up in another country. But, I can’t wait to read your take on them, haha. awesome!
I really, really liked this and I am looking forward to all the future reviews. I don’t mind it at all when negative or weird things in my old favorites get pointed out. I also get that reviewing a book is not really a thing that can be done objectively.
That said, I would also really enjoy hearing about some good bits as well!
I too have not read many of these YA classics getting mentioned in the comments and I don’t want to feel like they are all kinds of terrible before I even start. They must have some redeeming features to be able to retain popularity?
Loved your review, really made me laugh. As several mentioned, I remembered the garden and the mystery and the rest I must have self edited, maybe even then I didn’t think the other parts made much sense :).
Look at the Mary Poppins series. I loved reading them when I was young. The books were quite different from the movie version.
I’m not going to argue with the charges of racism, but I completely disagree that Hodgson Burnett was trying to teach little girls they always had to be docile and nice. The themes I see running through all of her books are that kind, caring, thoughtful people persevere, and that it is better to stick to your ethics even if it makes things much worse for you in the short term. I mean, Sara Crewe! The shit she had to put up with was intense. Living in a freezing attic, starving, having everything, including her family, taken away from her, being treated like garbage, and she still spends so much of her time trying to be kind to other people. Maybe I’m too sentimental, but it gets me!
If you want to see Hodgson Burnett’s ideal grown-up woman, read A Lady of Quality. She’s a strong, ass-whipping, horse-riding, wild woman who ends up murdering this guy who was always bothering her, learns that he had had kids with a bunch of women and abandoned them, and becomes a caring philanthropist. Also, she never has to pay for her crime, I guess because she “pays it forward.”
I hope I don’t sound like a humorless no-fun. I LOVE take-downs of literature and want to read more! I’m just hopelessly devoted to Frances Hodgson Burnett.
I'm not going to argue with the charges of racism, but I completely disagree that Hodgson Burnett was trying to teach little girls they always had to be docile and nice. The themes I see running through all of her books are that kind, caring, thoughtful people persevere, and that it is better to stick to your ethics even if it makes things much worse for you in the short term. I mean, Sara Crewe! The shit she had to put up with was intense. Living in a freezing attic, starving, having everything, including her family, taken away from her, being treated like garbage, and she still spends so much of her time trying to be kind to other people. Maybe I'm too sentimental, but it gets me!
If you want to see Hodgson Burnett's ideal grown-up woman, read A Lady of Quality. She's a strong, ass-whipping, horse-riding, wild woman who ends up murdering this guy who was always bothering her, learns that he had had kids with a bunch of women and abandoned them, and becomes a caring philanthropist. Also, she never has to pay for her crime, I guess because she "pays it forward."
I hope I don't sound like a humorless no-fun. I LOVE take-downs of literature and want to read more! I'm just hopelessly devoted to Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Ahhahhahha! Raggedy Katharine Hepburn! I was crying from laughing over that line. But this whole piece is so good. SO good. And I love “The Secret Garden” as a child – but remember almost none of it – so talk about an amusing and edifying trip down hazy memory lane! Please do these all the time! I’ll put in my vote for “Little Women” or “A Little Princess to stay on the Burnett theme. Or you could just write about how effed up “The Giving Tree” is.
Ahhahhahha! Raggedy Katharine Hepburn! I was crying from laughing over that line. But this whole piece is so good. SO good. And I love "The Secret Garden" as a child – but remember almost none of it – so talk about an amusing and edifying trip down hazy memory lane! Please do these all the time! I'll put in my vote for "Little Women" or "A Little Princess to stay on the Burnett theme. Or you could just write about how effed up "The Giving Tree" is.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
A couple of close friends recommended this book to me because it was a childhood favourite. I was ready to throw the book against the wall when they couldn’t stop going on and on about how India was this horrible place and the only reason Mary was ill (I’m South Asian too). Then they got into the actual garden, which was nice. Then it was The Secret and I’m like WHAT THE HELL NOT THIS TOO.
I ended up causing a bit of a fight with these friends because they felt like something precious to them was ruined forever. They did eventually come around and see why I was so upset about it. The only reason I even read the whole thing through was because I saw how much it meant to them!
When I was reading this I wondered if I was the only person who felt that way. I saw that Cracked.com picked up on it, but that was all. So I’m really grateful for this article’s existence.
OK I was going to copy a paste some quotes that I particularly loved from this but then I realised I would have been copying basically the whole thing because this is full of awesome. Love, love, love this! I didn’t read The Secret Garden as a kid either but I loved the movie and had a massive crush on Dickon. I read the book as an adult and adored it – I don’t even remember the bit about Jem’s wife! Eek!
A Little Princess is way more effed up than this.
Have you read Peter Pan? That is a must to catch up on! It’s also pretty effed up.
Great post on one of my favourite films, but have never read the book. Going to now!!! I did love your statement:”I lived in New York City with a mural that said “Crack is Wack” up the street from my apartment. I did not have time to read about a little girl who managed to finish an entire bowl of porridge.”
Cracked me up (no pun intended)!
I also loved The Little Princess. The one with Shirley Temple? I have it on DVD! But again I never read it! perhpas I should. I recently read the Children of the New Forest and am half way through The Coral Island. Books I read when I was a kid growing up in Rural ireland. I have had an obsession with flying fish ever since but couldn’t figure out why until I began rereading tte story.
I had come to the conclusion that perhaps it was a past life memory!!! But no..there it was, in one of my childhood favourite books. Castaway isn’t a patch on it!!!
Books are the product of their time.
Books are the product of their time.
I just randomly read this book over the last day and I ignored the "noble savage" crap because somethings do need to be read in context of the society and honestly, Mrs. Medlock showed some tolerance saying something like we are all humans, but as soon as I got to the wife beating part I googled misogyny and the Secret Garden to make sure I wasn't the only one who got it. Your review was hilarious – thanks. FYI, if you read Little Women there's a "I'm angry every day of my life – you must submit Jo" section that will stick out, although if you read Alcott's adult novels like "Moods", you may buy the interpretation that she's being subversive by parroting this kind of stuff… you may – I never was. Thanks again for the laugh.
I read this over and over as a child. Don’t worry, I didn’t internalize the “think positive and no one will beat you” lesson. I internalized the “if you’re sickly, make sure to get better in secret and then you’ll show everyone!!!!!” lesson. Also I now have a garden.
Coming in here very late to say that in fact, YES, PL Travers did in fact rewrite the more problematic sections to get rid of the worst stereotypes. I don't know when they date from, but at least from the 90s.
I think they're wonderful books, and certainly much better than the movies.
Well, here I am after three years to say Jaya, after having been traumatised by Wuthering Heights and The Secret Garden, you need to read Cold Comfort Farm, because it’s a spoof of this kind of ‘let’s like on the moors and brood!’ ‘Rural Noir’ genre in which the heroine tries to get magical gloomy Yorkshire servants to use better kind of mop and wash the curtains. It’s beautiful.
I came to Jaya’s wonderful post just today, after reading Susan Harlan’s excellent tribute to the 1993 film http://the-toast.net/2016/03/16/great-house-thera…
Me, I grew up with a very serious and virtuous Quaker grandma who was always giving us classic children’s stories which imparted moral lessons, along with a heapin’ helping of shame for all my zillions of personal shortcomings: Books like The Plain Princess, by Phyllis McGinley, and Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, by Margaret Sidney. Perfect as Grandma was, I knew she would weep with disappointment if she only knew the kind of trashy paperback crap I preferred to read. Unless perhaps there are some Important Moral Lessons in Rosemary Rogers romances.
Cold Comfort Farm! I need to re-read that one, it made me laugh until I cried.