Books Like The Secret Garden
Introduction: A Story About Tending and Being Tended
The Secret Garden (1911) is one of the most beloved children’s novels ever written, and its premise is deceptively simple. Mary Lennox, a spoiled and neglected child orphaned in India, is sent to her uncle’s vast Yorkshire manor, where she discovers a walled garden that has been locked for ten years - and, in restoring it, restores herself, her invalid cousin Colin, and eventually the whole house. The novel’s power comes from its central idea: that living things need tending, and that tending them heals the tender. It is a story about healing through nature, friendship and work, and the books that resemble it are the ones that share that faith in growth - of gardens, of children, of hearts.
This guide gathers the strongest readalikes, from Burnett’s own novels to modern children’s classics, with honest content notes and a clear sense of what each shares with the original.
The Same Author: Burnett’s Other Novels of Transformation
Readers who love The Secret Garden usually start with Frances Hodgson Burnett’s other books, and the best of them share its exact emotional architecture.
A Little Princess (1905) is the closest in spirit. Sara Crewe, a wealthy little girl sent to a London boarding school, is suddenly orphaned and reduced to a servant when her father dies - and she survives poverty and cruelty through imagination, kindness and an unbreakable belief in her own worth. It shares The Secret Garden’s rags-to-transformation structure and its emphasis on the inner life as the source of resilience, but it is a story of endurance rather than healing: Sara does not change the world, she survives it with her character intact.
The Lost Prince (1915) is Burnett’s lesser-known novel, but it is the one that most closely resembles The Secret Garden’s plot of secret places and hidden identities: a boy living in exile in London discovers that he is the son of the rightful king of a fictional European country, and a secret society works to restore him to the throne. It is more of an adventure story and less of a healing story, but it shares the theme of a child discovering a hidden world that gives his life meaning.
The Great Outdoors: Nature as Healer
The readalikes that capture The Secret Garden’s heart best are the ones that put nature at the center of a child’s healing.
Heidi by Johanna Spyri (1880) is the essential pairing. Heidi, an orphan, is sent to live with her grandfather in the Swiss Alps, where the mountain air, the goats and the old man’s gruff affection transform her - and, in the novel’s most famous section, she is taken to the city and becomes ill with homesickness, and the mountain cures her. It shares The Secret Garden’s faith in nature as a healing force, its pastoral setting, and its concern with children who are damaged by adult neglect and restored by the natural world. It is entirely clean and suitable for family reading.
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George (1959) is the modern counterpart for readers who want the nature element without the manor: a boy runs away from his New York City apartment to live alone in the Catskill Mountains, learning to survive with a falcon as his companion. It shares the book’s reverence for the natural world and its belief in self-sufficiency as a source of growth, with a stronger survival-adventure element.
Pax by Sara Pennypacker (2016) is a contemporary novel that carries the same themes into darker territory: a boy is forced to abandon his pet fox when his father enlists in a war, and the novel follows both the boy’s journey home and the fox’s own journey, alternating between them. It shares The Secret Garden’s conviction that children are healed by nature and by the creatures they care for, but it is a war story with real loss, and it is better suited to older readers.
A Touch of Magic: Gardens That Do More Than Grow
The Secret Garden itself is never clearly magical - the garden’s power could be entirely natural - but many of its readalikes make the magic explicit.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (2016) is the modern masterpiece of the subgenre: every year the people of a town leave a baby in the forest as a sacrifice to a witch, and the witch, who is actually kind, rescues the babies and raises them - until one year she accidentally feeds a baby moonlight, and the child grows up with magic in her. It shares The Secret Garden’s interest in children who are raised without love and healed by wonder, and its central image - a girl who is shaped by the moon as Mary is shaped by the garden - is unforgettable.
The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell (2015) shares the wildness and the healing: a girl named Feodora lives in the Russian snow with her mother, who teaches tamed wolves to be wild again, and when the wolves are threatened, Feo must lead them on a journey that heals her own grief. It has the same belief in the natural world as a source of courage and recovery, with a more adventurous plot.
The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson (1994) is a gentler option: beneath platform thirteen of a London railway station is a door to a magical island kingdom, open for nine days every nine years, and a group of mythical creatures must rescue a prince who was left behind in the human world. Ibbotson’s novels - especially Journey to the River Sea (2001) - share Burnett’s warmth, her orphaned children, and her conviction that children flourish when they are given the natural world to grow in.
The Orphan’s Story: Children Who Must Make Their Own Family
The other great thread of The Secret Garden is the orphaned child who must build a family and a home from almost nothing, and this thread runs through some of the most beloved novels in English.
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (1908) is the readalike that shares the most DNA: an orphan girl, imagined to be a boy, arrives by mistake at a farm on Prince Edward Island and transforms the lives of the aging brother and sister who take her in. It shares The Secret Garden’s structure of a child who brings life to a lonely household, with a much funnier and more verbal heroine.
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (1906) is the classic that shares the family’s fall from comfort and the children’s resourcefulness: three siblings move to a cottage by a railway when their father is wrongly imprisoned, and they find adventure, friendship and eventually justice through their encounters at the station. It has the same warmth and the same faith in children’s agency, with a mystery at its center instead of a garden.
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (1945) is the wildest and funniest member of the family: a nine-year-old girl with superhuman strength lives alone with a monkey and a horse, answers to no one, and delights in overturning the conventions of her small town. It shares the theme of a child who refuses to be diminished by adult expectation, though its tone is pure comedy.
Themes and Values That Hold the Readalikes Together
The category coheres around a few core beliefs that are worth naming.
The natural world as a source of healing is the central theme. In The Secret Garden, the cure for Mary’s sourness and Colin’s invalidism is the same: fresh air, digging, growing things. The readalikes all carry this faith - Heidi’s mountain, Feo’s wolves, Peter’s falcon in My Side of the Mountain, the moon-fed magic of Luna in Barnhill’s novel.
The child as an agent of renewal is the second theme. The adults in these books are often helpless, grieving or neglectful; the children are the ones who restore the household. Mary revives Misselthwaite Manor. Anne revives Green Gables. The Railway Children restore their mother’s spirits and their father’s name. This is the books’ great comfort: that children have power, that they can heal what adults have broken.
Kindness as a practical skill is the third theme. Mary learns to care for a garden and a robin and a boy; Sara Crewe learns to share her imaginary feast with a hungrier child; Feo learns to teach wolves to be wild. In all of them, goodness is not a sentiment but a set of small, practical actions - tending, feeding, digging, comforting - which is exactly why the books feel so grounded despite their magic.
Content Notes: What These Books Contain
The classic recommendations here are all clean and suitable for family reading. The Secret Garden itself begins with loss - Mary’s parents die in a cholera outbreak, and Burnett handles it gently but honestly - and the novel’s emotional core is Colin’s recovery from what is implied to be a psychosomatic illness. Our family-friendly character book club questions guide includes ways to discuss illness, grief and healing with younger readers.
Heidi, A Little Princess, The Railway Children and Anne of Green Gables are entirely appropriate for children. Pippi Longstocking is clean and uproariously funny, with the mildest of mischief. The Girl Who Drank the Moon and The Wolf Wilder are middle-grade novels with occasional moments of threat and loss, suitable for readers around age nine and up. Pax is the one to flag: it is a war story with real grief, including the loss of a parent, and it is best for older readers or for reading together. Our meaningful family book club questions guide can help families choose what fits their readers.
A Reading Plan for Book Clubs
The Secret Garden is a book that rewards adult rereading as much as childhood reading, which makes it an excellent family book club choice. The richest discussions come from the novel’s central metaphor: what is the garden, exactly? The children’s health restored by fresh air and work? The neglected house and family restored by love? The buried capacity for joy in a child who was never shown any? Clubs can also discuss the book’s treatment of illness - Colin’s wheelchair, his tantrums, his recovery - and how much of it reads, a century later, as a portrait of the healing power of meaningful activity.
Reading The Secret Garden alongside a modern counterpart - The Girl Who Drank the Moon or Pax - generates a useful comparison of how children’s literature has changed: what stays the same about healing and nature, and what has become more honest about loss. Our character book club questions guide offers structured prompts for these discussions, and our family book club questions guide adapts them for mixed-age groups.
How to Choose Your Next Book
The choice depends on which part of The Secret Garden you loved most. If the garden itself - the walled place, the digging, the sense of something growing - was the heart of the book for you, Heidi and My Side of the Mountain will give you the strongest nature-and-healing element. If it was the locked mystery, the discovery of a hidden world, then The Secret of Platform 13 and The Lost Prince are your books. If it was Mary herself - the sour, lonely child who changes - then A Little Princess and Anne of Green Gables are the readalikes that honor that reading. And if it was the magical dimension, the sense that the garden does more than grow, The Girl Who Drank the Moon is the modern masterpiece of exactly that.
Age also matters. For young readers, Heidi, A Little Princess, The Railway Children and Anne of Green Gables are all entirely suitable. For middle-grade readers who want a touch of magic, The Girl Who Drank the Moon and The Wolf Wilder are ideal. And for family reading that wants to discuss healing, illness and grief together, our family book club guides offer structured questions for exactly this kind of book.
Conclusion: The Garden We All Carry
The Secret Garden endures because it is about a need that does not change: the need to tend something and be tended in return. Mary Lennox begins the novel as a child no one wanted and ends it as a child who has made a garden, a friend and a family grow - and the novel’s quiet argument is that the same is available to anyone who will dig, and wait, and care for living things. The books on this list all descend from that argument, and each one grows it in its own direction: a mountain in Switzerland, a wolf in the snow, a door under a railway platform, a garden locked for ten years. Start with whichever piece of the story you loved most, and let the readalikes show you how large a single walled garden can become. For the full collection of reading paths, begin at the Guides section of our site.
