고등학교 공통영어1 (NE능률 민병천) 연계 글

When my friend Dohee saw the novel on my desk, she laughed and asked why anyone would read a book from 1911. I had wondered the same thing when I found The Secret Garden on our summer reading list. In fact, I almost stopped after the first chapter because the main character seemed so unpleasant. If I had stopped there, I would have missed one of the best stories that I have ever read.

The novel, which Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote more than a century ago, begins in India. After her parents die of a deadly disease, a girl named Mary Lennox is sent to her uncle's huge house in Yorkshire, England. At first, Mary is so sour and selfish that it is hard to like her. Then she hears about a neglected garden that has been locked for ten years. A friendly robin leads her to its buried key, and soon she finds its hidden door.

What kept me reading was the way the characters slowly change. Mary becomes friends with Dickon, a boy who can win the trust of almost any wild animal. Later, she discovers her cousin Colin, who has spent most of his life in bed and believes that he will not live long. As the three children secretly restore the garden, each of them begins to change. These changes do not happen overnight, so they felt genuine to me.

I must confess that the book is not always easy. Several characters, including Dickon and his sister Martha, speak a strong Yorkshire dialect that the author spells the way it sounds. At first, I skipped those lines because they looked like a foreign language. Then I tried reading them aloud, and to my surprise, they suddenly made sense. My advice is simple: read those lines aloud instead of skipping them.

Before I read this book, I had never kept even a single plant alive. Since I finished it last month, however, I have been growing three basil plants by my window. Dohee still teases me about my "secret garden," but yesterday she asked to borrow my copy. If you also think that old books are dull, let me persuade you to give this one a few chapters.