School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 5-This beautifully illustrated edition of a collection first published in 1885 is a reminder of how well many of these poems hold up. Topics range from everyday mysteries like the strong but invisible wind ("I saw the different things you did/But always you yourself you hid") to the timeless fascination of watching the world go by from a train window ("And here is a mill, and there is a river:/Each a glimpse and gone forever!"). A few of the poems show their age in interesting ways, like "Travel" ("I should like to rise and go/.Where are forests, hot as fire,/.Full of apes and coconuts/And the Negro hunters' huts-" and "Foreign Children" (".Little Turk or Japanee/Oh! Don't you wish that you were me?"). Since there is no explanatory note in the front or end matter, here's hoping that the adults sharing these selections will provide the necessary historical context. But that's a minor quibble, especially given McClintock's charming pictures that show her beautiful line and color work, her feeling for landscape and personality, and her subtle sense of humor. 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.-Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
This compendium of information ``for, by and about young people'' features chapters on sports celebrities, health, games, clubs, history, law and science. (9-up) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
McClintock offers a complete edition of these old favorites in a format generous with white space and spot art as well as illustrative fantasies (the Land of Nod features mice in toy sailboats, with sweets standing in for flowers along the shore). Occasional full-page illustrations set the scene (the concluding "Envoys" section pictures a young letter writer whose missives flutter up from her pen to take flight as butterflies; Michael Foreman did the same but with birds for his 1985 edition); eponymous gardens burgeon invitingly throughout. Some faces are now various shades of brown -- somewhat anachronistic given the art's implied Victorian setting. Creatively, the ever-problematic "Foreign Children" become upside-down reflections of children in European dress, suggesting that the speaker is as curious about similarities as differences. Charles Robinson's elegant Art Nouveau illustrations for the 1896 edition caught Stevenson's sensibility, while Jessie Willcox Smith's similarly costumed children (1905) have more character than these. Brian Wildsmith's flamboyant paintings for his 1966 edition are best at celebrating the glorious imagination of the solitary child we know Stevenson to have been. Still, McClintock's blend of old and new should attract a new generation. There's a table of contents, but no index. joanna rudge long (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
To write good verse for children - verse which is neither stilted nor bald, neither sentimental nor prosaic - is among the difficult achievements of literature, and Mr Stevenson's delightful little volume is quite a triumph in its kind. A child's way of looking at things is so different from ours that a grown person in trying to express it almost feels as though he is using a foreign language, while yet from the nature of his task he is bound to the greatest simplicity and homeliness. This difficulty Mr Stevenson escapes through his wonderfully sympathetic imagination. He not only knows what the children like, but he likes it along with them. His verses are full of the surprises which chil dren themselves constantly give us in their odd mixture of fantasy and realism. They are admirable pictures of wholesome child-life, "innocent and honest", to use his own words - old-fashioned we had almost said, but, alas! for the world if so it is - delighting in its own wayward play. Of course the merit of the likeness in such a picture is more striking to onlookers than to those who are its subject; but there is no reason why children as well as older people should not relish the joy of finding expression, and more than expression, for their inner selves. Mr Stevenson knows the secret things that haunt rain-pools and grasses and dusky corners of firelit rooms, he loves ships, and he has seen the folly of being big. Summer and winter have each chosen familiar spirits, and even going to bed is only a step into a new realm of wonders. It is difficult to quote where the charm often lies in some quaint turn of a single line, but an adventure song with a fine roll recalling the lay of the Treasure Island is worth giving: "Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing. Three of us aboard in the basket on the lea: Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring, And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea. Where shall we adventure, today that we're afloat, Wary of the weather and steering by a star? Shall it be to Africa, a- steering of the boat. To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar?" Here again is a contrast of a domestic order, which must appeal to many childish hearts: "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 near 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 so much should like to play, To have to go to bed by day?" We are sorry not to have room for the dedication to the nurse - "My second mother; my first wife" - which is full of grace and poetry. If you are interested in the history of the Guardian or the Observer, please refer to www.guardian.co.uk/newsroom for more information on the Newsroom, a purpose- built archive and visitor centre for the Guardian, the Observer and Guardian Unlimited at 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA. Caption: article-Archive2.1 To write good verse for children - verse which is neither stilted nor bald, neither sentimental nor prosaic - is among the difficult achievements of literature, and Mr [Robert Louis Stevenson]'s delightful little volume is quite a triumph in its kind. A child's way of looking at things is so different from ours that a grown person in trying to express it almost feels as though he is using a foreign language, while yet from the nature of his task he is bound to the greatest simplicity and homeliness. This difficulty Mr Stevenson escapes through his wonderfully sympathetic imagination. He not only knows what the children like, but he likes it along with them. His verses are full of the surprises which chil dren themselves constantly give us in their odd mixture of fantasy and realism. They are admirable pictures of wholesome child-life, "innocent and honest", to use his own words - old-fashioned we had almost said, but, alas! for the world if so it is - delighting in its own wayward play.