A Child's Garden of Verses

by Robert Louis Stevenson, Eve Garnett (Illustrator)

Overview

Rediscover the delight and innocence of childhood in these classic poems from celebrated author, Robert Louis Stevenson.

From make-believe to climbing trees, bedtime stories to morning play and favourite cousins to beloved mothers.

Here is a very special collection to be treasured for ever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141934945
Publisher:	Penguin Random House Children's UK
Publication date:	08/07/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	6 MB
Age Range:	7 - 9 Years

About the Author

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. The son of a prosperous civil engineer, he was expected to follow the family profession but was finally allowed to study law at Edinburgh University. Stevenson reacted forcibly against the Presbyterianism of both his city's professional classes and his devout parents, but the influence of Calvinism on his childhood informed the fascination with evil that is so powerfully explored in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson suffered from a severe respiratory disease from his twenties onwards, leading him to settle in the gentle climate of Samoa with his American wife, Fanny Osbourne.

Date of Birth:

November 13, 1850

Date of Death:

December 3, 1894

Place of Birth:

Edinburgh, Scotland

Place of Death:

Vailima, Samoa

Education:

Edinburgh University, 1875

Read an Excerpt

Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping on the tree,

Or hear the grown-up people's feet

Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,

And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day?

Table of Contents

	Bed in Summer	9
	A Thought	10
	At the Seaside	11
	Young Night Thought	12
	Whole Duty of Children	13
	Rain	14
	Pirate Story	16
	Foreign Lands	18
	Windy Nights	20
	Travels	21
	Singing	23
	Looking Forward	24
	A Good Play	25
	Where Go the Boats	26
	Auntie's Skirts	27
	The Land of Counterpane	29
	The Land of Nod	30
	My Shadow	32
	System	35
	A Good Boy	36
	Escape at Bedtime	38
	Marching Song	40
	The Cow	42
	Happy Thought	44
	The Wind	46
	Keepsake Mill	48
	Good and Bad Children	49
	Foreign Children	50
	The Sun's Travels	52
	The Lamplighter	53
	My Bed is a Boat	54
	The Moon	57
	The Swing	58
	Time to Rise	59
	Looking-Glass River	60
	Fairy Bread	62
	From a Railway Carriage	64
	Wintertime	65
	The Hayloft	66
	Farewell to the Farm	68
	North-West Passage
1	Good Night	69
2	Shadow March	70
3	In Port	71
	The Child Alone
	The Unseen Playmate	74
	My Ship and I	75
	My Kingdom	76
	Picture Books in Winter	78
	My Treasures	80
	Block City	81
	The Land of Storybooks	82
	Armies in the Fire	84
	The Little Land	86
	Garden Days
	Night and Day	90
	Nest Eggs	92
	The Flowers	94
	Summer Sun	96
	The Dumb Soldier	98
	Autumn Fires	100
	The Gardener	102
	Historical Associations	104
	Envoys
	To Willie and Henrietta	106
	To my Mother	107
	To Auntie	108
	To Minnie	110
	To my Name-Child	113
	To any Reader	116
	Acknowledgements	118
	Robert Louis Stevenson	120
	A Short Biography

Editorial Reviews

A plethora of poetry books arrive just in time for National Poetry Month. Now available in a board book edition, A Child's Garden of Verses, compiled by Cooper Edens, pairs eight of Robert Louis Stevenson's poems with turn-of-the-century illustrations to captivate a child's imagination. For instance, "Happy Thought" ("The world is so full of a number of things,/ I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings") is embedded like a placard within a pen-and-ink by E. Mars (1900), while opposite, a 1940 illustration by Ruth Mary Hallock depicts a happy assembly of children and kittens, gathering for a snack break after a game of croquet. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Rendered in brilliant candy-shop colors, Joanna Isles's folk-art designs, whimsical characters and striking typestyles put a beguiling face on a beloved work: Abrams's edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses glows with charm and vitality.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

“This beautifully illustrated edition of a collection first published in 1885 is a reminder of how well many of these poems hold up....As for the poems themselves, Stevenson’s interest in cultivating the world of the imagination is a great message for today’s busy, media-saturated culture.” — School Library Journal

From the Publisher

2017-09-18
A sumptuous reissue of the classic children's collection.First published in Great Britain in 1885, Stevenson's "Garden," Alexander McCall Smith tells readers in his enlightening new foreword, has been in print ever since. Given the privileged, white, colonialist perspective glimpsed in many of these 64 lyric poems, today's audience may wonder what gives this volume such staying power. Stevenson's nostalgia for the unfettered cares of childhood comes powerfully across throughout. Modern children may have a hard time envisioning his Victorian "Auntie's Skirts" as "they trail behind her up the floor, / And trundle after through the door." More problematically, his worldly vantage is shockingly dated at best: "Little Indian, Sioux or Crow, / Little frosty Eskimo, / Little Turk or Japanee, / O! don't you wish that you were me?" But Stevenson's ability to craft and describe other realms still soars, demonstrating that the imagination can transport one out of anything—illness, boredom, even loneliness. His crisp depictions of winter, causing "tingling thumbs," and appreciation of the childhood hardship of having to go to bed in summer "When all the sky is clear and blue," invite children of any age to "look / Through the windows of this book," and "in another garden, play." Vistas real and imagined blossom again in Stevenson and Foreman's caring hands—but caregivers will want to choose the blooms they share with care. (Poetry. 5-10)

Kirkus Reviews