A Child's Garden of Verses

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Overview

This classic treasury by Robert Louis Stevenson invites children to take their first steps into the immense world that lies before them. Illustrated with more than 100 pictures by the most distinguished children's book illustrators of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this stunning edition brings together some of the world's best-loved poems and most enchanting art.

Lavishly illustrated, this collection contains all the poems that appeared in the original edition published more than a century ago. Children's imaginations can roam freely through simple, evocative verses that explore the wonders of exotic lands, the magic of day passing into night, the sheer joy of swinging through the sun-filled air, and the coziness of dreaming in front of a fire on a winter's night. The pictures, brimming with color and lush detail, brilliantly capture this universal splendor of a child's imaginative world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781453697016
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	07/12/2010
Pages:	54
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.11(d)

About the Author

Poet and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was the author of a number of classic books for young readers, including Treasure Island , Kidnapped, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Mr. Stevenson was often ill as a child and spent much of his youth confined to his nursery, where he first began to compose stories even before he could read, and where he was cared for by his nanny, Alison Cunningham, to whom A Child's Garden of Verses is dedicated.

Barbara McClintock has written and illustrated many acclaimed books for young readers, including Adèle & Simon, an ALA Notable Book, a Children's Book Sense Pick, and a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year, and Dahlia, a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book. She lives in Windham, Connecticut.

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

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