The Wonderful Garden; Or, The Three Cs

Three children stuck in a grey London house while their parents run free in India. It's dreadfully dull until they're packed off to the country to stay with a great-uncle they've never met, a mysterious old man with a secret garden. What they find there is a door to somewhere else entirely, and an old book called The Language of Flowers, its pages full of spells that might - or might not - work. Caroline, Charles, and Charlotte try them all, and things happen. But did the flowers really answer their wishes, or is it all just happy coincidence? Nesbit never tells, and that's the point. The magic lives in the wondering. A hundred years later, this still feels like the best kind of childhood: the kind where the garden gate is always waiting to be opened.