Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic children's novel was an enthralling, astute account of an emotionally abandoned girl's rebirth through her affiliation with the secrets of a garden-itself abandoned and in need of care. In a gloomy, eerie mansion on the Yorkshire moors, she befriends a boy more desperately lonely than she, and another lad who shelters stray animals, wilted plants, and people like herself. The 1949 film version has a marvelous performance by Margaret O'Brien, past her cute stage and able to convey the icy pride and vulnerability of young Mary Lennox. The film, produced by Clarence Brown (The Yearling), trades the novel's magical communion with nature for a sentimental one, but it telegraphs the wonderment with a gloriously Technicolor garden in an otherwise black-and-white world.