The Secret Garden

This is truly a children's classic, beautifully narrated with excellent accents and clear speech. It does this classic novel proud, and I'm glad its part of my audio collection.

One small technical note: the person who spliced the chapters together left absolutely no space between the last word of one chapter and the name of the next chapter. So Chapter 1 ends as: "... and the little rustling snakeChapter 2..." How this got through Audible's quality control beats me.

This is such a wonderful story. I read The Secret Garden over and over as a girl, and still never tire of it. (The same is true of The Little Princess.) I love how real the two children at the heart of the story are, and how their growth as characters is so dramatic but also generally very believable.

Audible has several editions of the Secret Garden, so I listened to samples of all the readers and ended up choosing this one. I'm glad -- the narrator does a very nice job of conveying the spirit of the characters without letting her own interpretation get in the way of the story as written. My only complaint is the same as the previous reviewer's; the editing of this audiobook left no space whatsoever between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, and so each time a new chapter begins, it is quite jarring.

This was only the second book that I have downloaded from Audible.com and once again it was for the entertainment of my granddaughter whilst she sits in the car with me. This review is really feedback from her listening intervention. She was thoroughly delighted with the manner in which the reader brought the book to life using the most perfect diction and characterisation of voices. The storyline was so easy to follow and because of the interesting way in which the reader chose to dialogue, my granddaughter remembers at least 50% more of the story than she would had she read it for herself.

I really enjoyed listening to this myself and found myself getting drawn into the story.

Keep up the good work.

There is so much more to this book than I got out of it as a child. The only reason I didn't give it a full five stars was the disconcerting way in which new chapters were introduced - with absolutely no pause between the last word of the previous chapter and the announcement of the next. This may have been a problem created when editing the sound track since it seemed inconsistent with the rest of the reading. All in all I did enjoy listening.

This book is wonderful, and it was very well narrated and easy to follow, even for my 5-year old troublemaker. After seeing it on film, in various productions, hearing it again in its unabridged format brought back to me the whole story, in all the richness of detail that no movie can portray. I think this book is particularly suitable in Audible format.

Even though this is a classic, I had never read it. I can see why this story has been loved by so many. None of the characters are particularly likeable, accept Dicken, who seems to have taken possession of everyone's nice qualities. But, through the process of playing and just being kids, they discover how to bring the best out of each other, and consequently, themselves.

My 7 year old daughter and I really enjoyed listening to this story together. Now, we both break into " Broad Yorkshire" from time to time. There were moments in the story that the Yorkshire made it difficult to understand what was being said, but we would go back and listen to it again. I really enjoy deciphering accents anyway. This story was very well read, and the accents made the story that much more enjoyable.

On the flip side, Colin's diatribes on magic got old and tiresome. There were whole sections that I wanted to fast forward through. I felt like the author's point about magic, God, positive thinking...whatever, could have been made a little more quickly.

Another up side from listening to this story is that my daughter has found her jump rope and has been practicing all the time! You have to love a book that makes kids want to get out and play!

This is a very endearing story and I would highly recommend it. The only flaw in this audio book is that there is very little time, if any, between the close of a chapter and the beginning of the next.

One doesn't have time to process or realise that a chapter has ended and the narrator is speaking....almost over the top of the last sentence.

An absolutely beautifully read classic. Even with it's quirkiness and older story telling technique, it is a hard one to stop listening too.

It's a good audiobook and would be a great choice for listening to with kids. I already knew the story but the audiobook was a breeze to listen to.

I like the fact that the book shows it is never too late to be happy. Also the descriptions of India and a grand old English Manor are exciting because these are so different from the places where I have lived.

My favorite is the descriptions of the journey from India to England.

I loved any scene with Dickon in it because he just seemed like a person who exuded happiness. Specifically when Dickon was interacting with animals.

This was a good lighthearted listen in between two long and pretty heavy books for me. I loved spending time revisiting a book I loved as a child and the readers accents for all the different characters really made it even more enjoyable.

I received a copy of this book from my maiden great-aunt when I was 11. My aunt had bought it new in 1917. I loved it then, and I still do. The narrator, Venessa Maroney, has the various Yorkshire accents down perfectly. It was like time traveling back to Yorkshire a hundred years ago.