Because there's only one The Secret Garden. Because the story in itself--a story about learning to love and respect oneself, about the beauty of Yorkshire and finding healing in nature--is beautiful and worthwile. It's not because a book is a classic that it's valuable. It's because a book is valuable that it's a classic.

I would be a much emptier person if I'd never read The Secret Garden or Anne of Green Gables or, yes, even Little House on the Prairie as a child. I'm not blind to their problems. But I don't love them because they're classics. I love them because I find the stories beautiful, despite their flaws, and I have loved being able to share them with the children in my life.

I'm sorry if I'm misrepresenting your position here, but surely you're not actually suggesting that we throw out any book that might have objectionable content. Because if that's true, then I, for one, am out of a job, since I specialize in 19th-century British literature. I am hard-pressed to find literature there that isn't offensive. And, you know, there goes Shakespeare. (If you're going to protest that you're talking about elementary school, my fifth-grade class read and performed Macbeth.) And yet I still intend to give my niece and nephew Alice in Wonderland as soon as they're old enough. (Filled with misogynistic imagery, but somehow still delightful to me.)