Q 01/05

Which disease kills Mary Lennox's parents in India at the start of The Secret Garden?

A) Typhoid

B) Cholera

C) Smallpox

D) Malaria

Answer · why

B) Cholera

Cholera kills so many so fast that the surviving servants flee the bungalow. Mary is simply forgotten until officers find her standing alone in the nu...

Q 02/05

Which bird leads Mary Lennox to the long-lost key and the hidden door in The Secret Garden?

A) A skylark

B) A wren

C) A robin

D) A thrush

Answer · why

C) A robin

A robin shows Mary where the rusty key lies and, soon after, the door itself. The author based him on a real bird that kept her company while she wrot...

Q 03/05

Mary Lennox's uncle in The Secret Garden lives on the edge of a moor in which English county?

A) Yorkshire

B) Northumberland

C) Cornwall

D) Somerset

Answer · why

A) Yorkshire

Yorkshire gives the book its speech as well as its setting. Mary comes to love the broad local dialect and tries to learn to speak it herself.

Q 04/05

Which novelist began The Secret Garden while planning a garden for her own home on Long Island?

A) Lucy Maud Montgomery

B) Kate Douglas Wiggin

C) Laura Ingalls Wilder

D) Frances Hodgson Burnett

Answer · why

D) Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett called it her favourite of her own novels. Even so, her obituaries in 1924 passed over the book in silence.

Q 05/05

Which word do other children in The Secret Garden use when they tease Mary Lennox with a rhyme?

A) Solitary

B) Contrary

C) Ordinary

D) Unwary

Answer · why

B) Contrary

Contrary stuck so firmly that the author's working title for the whole novel was Mistress Mary. The clergyman's son Basil starts the teasing.