2009 books 1, 2, and 3

Since I don't have a local library card yet, I'm rereading various selections from my own bookshelves, starting with some classic literature:

Eleanor Porter's Pollyanna
It's been many years since I had read this, and I've seen the movie many times (I always spend the last ten minutes sobbing)--I was amazed to see how much Disney added to a story that was already pretty Disney-fied. The movie also adds more of the God stuff than is in the book (or at least makes those bits more dramatic). My edition, from 1987, has an afterword by Lois Lowry--which I imagine kids might not have found too appealing, but makes for a nice wrap-up when reading it as an adult.

Roald Dahl's Matilda
This is one of my favorite Dahl books--maybe b/c it came out when I was a kid, or is really the only one of his books about a girl. This is another one with weird changes to the movie version (though I've never seen that one the whole way through--it just doesn't come close to the book).

Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden
I think this is one of those books that's good no matter how many times you read it! I love the transformative power of nature and cute animals on the cranky little Mary, though on this reread I noticed that once Colin becomes prominent to the story, Mary totally disappears. The last few chapters aren't really her story at all, anymore. Though I guess she'd already had her catharsis and didn't need it at that point. Since I'm talking about movie versions, I guess I'll note here that we watched some movie version of this in elementary school after we read the book--it had some ridiculous tacked-on end where the three kids, all grown-up, come back to the garden. Mary had married one of the boys, but I forget which one (I'm hoping Dickon--Colin was her first cousin, after all).