Classic Starts® Audio: The Secret Garden (Classic Starts® Series) - Softcover

Burnett, Frances Hodgson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1402773595 ISBN 13: 9781402773594

Publisher: Union Square Kids, 2010

Synopsis

Following Sterling's spectacularly successful launch of its children's classic novels (240,000 books in print to date),comes a dazzling new series: Classic Starts. The stories are abridged; the quality is complete. Classic Starts treats the world's beloved tales (and children) with the respect they deserve--all at an incomparable price.

The discovery of a neglected garden transforms the life of a sullen and unloved little girl-and everyone around her, too. When the newly orphaned Mary Lennox leaves her native India and arrives at her uncle's mansion in Yorkshire, everything seems strange to her. Then Mary hears of a mysterious garden where no one has set foot in 10 years. With the help of some new friends, she plans to uncover its secrets...and make it blossom once again.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Gr 3-5–Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic is the quintessential tale of re-awakening and redemption. Mary Lennox, the spoiled poster-child of literature, wins our hearts as we come to empathize with her abandonment in the care of a remote uncle on the gray Yorkshire moors. Finding the key to a mysterious garden is the key to her blossoming as a person. The point of the Classic Starts Series is to make timeless stories accessible to young children, and this is a laudable goal. However, this version (Sterling, 2005), abridged by Martha Hailey, has been so simplified and Americanized that it loses its Yorkshire soul. The narrator's mellow voice is pleasant, but there is little attempt made to distinguish different character voices or to connect the tale to the English countryside. Discussion questions are posed at the end of the book (but not the CD) for further classroom study. There is also a short treatise by Arthur Prober, EdD, defending the abridgement of classics as a way to encourage independent reading of an otherwise overwhelmingly lengthy novel.Lonna Pierce, MacArthur Elementary School, Binghamton, NY
© Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Union Square Kids
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1402773595
• ISBN 13: 9781402773594
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: Corvino Lucy