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As many books as I checked out from the library in grammar school, I do not know how I missed this one. I'm glad I found it now; I enjoyed reading it so much! ( )
I'm giving away some stuff here as I ramble, so don't read this if you haven't read the story already. It's different from the movie and TV versions I've seen: it's simpler---Colin doesn't wear braces, his father's mood improves on its own. The author spends a lot of time pointing out how and why Mary and Colin become better people: nature and the friendship of another child. Dickon represents something really important---he's a perfect person: I like that the highest and lowliest would both be comfortable with him (as, of course, he would be with them). His mother explains that Colin's "magic" is like other religions and spirituality---all come from and lead to the "Joymaker," with a capital J. In other words, there are many equally valid paths to God. Mary is something like an Elijah figure---Colin would not have improved without her, but she is also improved by being with him. Both Colin and Mary are rich enough to not have to do anything for themselves (Mary can't dress herself) and unloved enough to have never been disciplined. In the beginning of the story, they are spoiled rotten and unkind and, hence, unhappy. Finally, the children live in a world without real disease (except for everyone in Mary's household dying in India) or war or abject poverty. (Dickon's family is poor, but not starving, and his mother is respected by everyone. In fact, the housekeeper of the big estate thinks that his mother would be considered quite intelligent if only she could get rid of her Yorkshire accent.) The story borders on fantasy: does Dickon really communicate with animals; does the robin tell Mary where the key is?
I enjoyed the book, I'd recommend it to someone having a hard time with grief or just interested in appreciating the wonder of the world through nature. ( )
My son and I listened to this via an audio download from the library. It was a delight, and he loved it too. He kept saying, "this is so interesting!" How did I miss this book for so long? ( )
This story is a classic but it is slightly problematic. It has major themes and allusions to colonialism in India and I do not think that is responsible to present this tory to students without explaining that in the beginning.
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
Citacions
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
The seeds Dickon and Mary had planted grew as if fairies had tended them. Satiny poppies of all tints danced in the breeze by the score, gaily defying flowers which had lived in the garden for years and which it might be confessed seemed rather to wonder how such new people had got there. And the roses—the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled round the sundial, wreathing the tree trunks, and hanging from their branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long garlands falling in cascades—they came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair, fresh leaves and buds— and buds—tiny at first, but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air.
And over walls and earth and trees and swinging sprays and tendrils the fair green veil of tender little leaves had crept, and in the grass under the trees and the gray urns in the alcoves and here and there everywhere were touches or splashes of gold and purple and white and the trees were showing pink and snow above his head and there were fluttering of wings and faint sweet pipes and humming and scents and scents. And the sun fell warm upon his face like a hand with a lovely touch. And in wonder Mary and Dickon stood and stared at him.
They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months that followed--the wonderful months--the radiant months--the amazing ones. Oh! the things which happened in that garden! If you have never had a garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds and the buds began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days flowers had been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner. Ben Weatherstaff had seen it done and had himself scraped out mortar from between the bricks of the wall and made pockets of earth for lovely clinging things to grow on. Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and white flower lances of tall delphiniums or columbines or campanulas. "She was main fond o' them--she was", Ben Weatherstaff said.
It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass of a wintry brown and out of it grew clumps of bushes which were surely rosebushes if they were alive. There were numbers of standard roses which had so spread their branches that they were like little trees. There were other trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place look strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over them and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains, and here and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching branch and had crept from one tree to another and made lovely bridges of themselves. There were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary did not know whether they were dead or alive, but their thin gray or brown branches and sprays looked like a sort of hazy mantle spreading over everything, walls, and trees, and even brown grass, where they had fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground. It was this hazy tangle from tree to tree which made it all look so mysterious. Mary had thought it must be different from other gardens which had not been left all by themselves so long; and indeed it was different from any other place she had ever seen in her life.
There had once been a flowerbed in it, and she thought she saw something sticking out of the black earth- -some sharp little pale green points. She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said and she knelt down to look at them. "Yes, they are tiny growing things and they might be crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils," she whispered. She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp earth. She liked it very much. "Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places," she said. "I will go all over the garden and look." She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly and kept her eyes on the ground. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass, and after she had gone round, trying to miss nothing, she had found ever so many more sharp, pale green points, and she had become quite excited again. "It isn't a quite dead garden," she cried out softly to herself. "Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive." She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so thick in some of the places where the green points were pushing their way through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to grow. She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece of wood and knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she made nice little clear places around them. "Now they look as if they could breathe," she said, after she had finished with the first ones. "I am going to do ever so many more. I'll do all I can see. If I haven't time today I can come tomorrow." She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself so immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass under the trees.
To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscovered things to be able to explain how this had happened to him. Neither does anyone else yet.
There was a wooden box on the table ... full of neat packages. "Mr Craven sent it to you," said Martha.... There were two or three games and there was a beautiful little writing-case with a gold monogram on it and a gold pen and ink-stand.
"Let's ask Mrs Medlock for a pen and ink and some paper" [said Mary]. "I've got some of my own," said Martha. "Let's ask Mrs Medlock [the housekeeper] for a pen and ink and some paper" [said Mary]. "I've got some of my own," said Martha. "I bought 'em so I could print a bit of a letter to Mother of a Sunday. I'll go and get it." ... Martha returned with her pen and ink and paper.
Darreres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
And by his side with his head up in the air and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as any boy in Yorkshire—Master Colin!
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