Secrets Of Growing Up

Secret has been a commonly seen subject in children's novels concerned with a child's growing-up process. Taking two famous children's novels, that is, The Secret Garden and From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, as examples, the paper tries to describe how kinds of secrets are displayed in these children's novels and how the growing-up process is represented through this way, with the afterward attempt to reveal the texts' function in forming a reader's understanding of child growing.In the introduction, I have given out the motive for my choosing such a topic and the main writing technique I would adopt.The first part aims to illustrate several concepts in a text-bound analysis.The second part explains how the secrets have promoted the protagonist's growing process in the two novels. It points out that, in isolating out a personal space for the protagonist and giving him/her a feeling of superiority of knowing something secret, the secrets have help enhance his/her self-consciousness and self-confidence. And in providing an adventure performed on one's own, they also give an important push to the reinforcement of the protagonist's energy and capability. Both of the two processes are contradiction-settling for one's growing. And the secret-sharing event moves on to promote the growing process into a sound and active model.Part three tries to explain how the aforesaid children's secrets are supervised by adults, and how the concept of growing-up is constructed through this way. It figures out that the two texts have formed a model for child growing, which attaches great importance to a child's independence and great capability in growing-up, and at the same time acknowledges the necessity of adult's supervision in order to keep it a process out of danger. In offering such a model, the texts have showed the desire to form or shape their reader's understanding of child growing.However, the semantic suggestion of the word secret, which means keeping from knowledge or view, can't help to oppose to such a kind of supervision. This gives rise to the following question: Is the supervision and the growing-up model proposed in the texts all accountable? It offers us another kind of space for rethinking the meaning of child growing, which is sure to enrich our understanding of it.