Classic Starts Audio

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