A child's garden of verses / Robert Louis Stevenson ; with a foreword by Alexander McCall Smith ; illustrated by Michael Foreman.

Title :

A child's garden of verses

Author:

Format:

Books

Summary:

A collection of poems evoking the world and feelings of childhood. It is one of the best-loved classic poetry collections ever written and is illustrated here by the world-famous artist Michael Foreman in a beautiful new gift edition, with a foreward by Alexander McCall Smith.

Language:

English

ISBN - ISSN:

9781910959107

1910959103

Physical Description:

124 pages : illustrations (some colour) ; 24 cm.

General Note:

Poetry first published in Great Britain in 1885. First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz with illustrations by Michael Foreman in 1985.

Contents:

Foreward / Alexander McCall Smith -- Dedication -- Bed in summer -- A thought -- At the seaside -- Young night thought -- Whole duty of children -- Rain -- Pirate story -- Foreign lands -- Windy nights -- Travel -- Singing -- Looking forward -- A good play -- Where go the boats? -- Auntie's skirts -- The land of counterpane -- The land of Nod -- My shadow -- System -- A good boy -- Escape at bedtime -- Marching song -- The cow -- Happy thought -- The wind -- Keepsake Mill -- Good and bad children -- Foreign children -- The Sun's travels -- The lamplighter -- My bed is a boat -- The Moon -- The swing -- Time to rise -- Looking-glass river -- Fairy bread -- From a railway carriage -- Winter-time -- The hayloft -- Farewell to the farm -- North-West Passage: 1. Good night ; 2. Shadow March ; 3. In port -- The child alone: The unseen playmate -- My ship and I -- My kingdom -- Picture-books in winter -- My treasures -- Block city -- The land of story-books -- Armies in the fire -- The little land -- Garden days: Night and day -- Nest eggs -- The flowers -- Summer sun -- The dumb soldier -- Autumn fires -- The gardener -- Historical associations -- Envoys: To Willie and Henrietta -- To my mother -- To auntie -- To Minnie -- To my name-child -- To any reader.

Subject:

Children's poetry, English.

Children's poetry, Scottish.

Children's poetry.

English poetry -- Scottish authors.

English poetry.

Scottish poetry.

Poetry.

First Title value, for Searching:

A child's garden of verses / Robert Louis Stevenson ; with a foreword by Alexander McCall Smith ; illustrated by Michael Foreman.

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Library	Audience	Home Location	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Central	Kid/Juvenile	Open Stacks Non-Fiction	Open Stacks Kids Book	821.8 S	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A Child's Garden of Verses is one of the best-loved classic poetry books for children ever written. The world-famous illustrator Michael Foreman complements these classic and beloved verses with illustrations as luminous and clear as Stevenson's own word pictures.

This edition was first published to mark the collection's centenary year of 1985, and is now reissued in a finely-produced gift edition in hardcover with cloth binding and a ribbon marker. Includes a new foreword by best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith.

Author Notes

Novelist, poet, and essayist Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. A sickly child, Stevenson was an invalid for part of his childhood and remained in ill health throughout his life. He began studying engineering at Edinburgh University but soon switched to law. His true inclination, however, was for writing. For several years after completing his studies, Stevenson traveled on the Continent, gathering ideas for his writing. His Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey (1878) describe some of his experiences there. A variety of essays and short stories followed, most of which were published in magazines. It was with the publication of Treasure Island in 1883, however, that Stevenson achieved wide recognition and fame. This was followed by his most successful adventure story, Kidnapped, which appeared in 1886.

With stories such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Stevenson revived Daniel Defoe's novel of romantic adventure, adding to it psychological analysis. While these stories and others, such as David Balfour and The Master of Ballantrae (1889), are stories of adventure, they are at the same time fine studies of character. The Master of Ballantrae, in particular, is a study of evil character, and this study is taken even further in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).

In 1887 Stevenson and his wife, Fanny, went to the United States, first to the health spas of Saranac Lake, New York, and then on to the West Coast. From there they set out for the South Seas in 1889. Except for one trip to Sidney, Australia, Stevenson spent the remainder of his life on the island of Samoa with his devoted wife and stepson. While there he wrote The Wrecker (1892), Island Nights Entertainments (1893), and Catriona (1893), a sequel to Kidnapped. He also worked on St. Ives and The Weir of Hermiston, which many consider to be his masterpiece. He died suddenly of apoplexy, leaving both of these works unfinished. Both were published posthumously; St. Ives was completed by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and The Weir of Hermiston was published unfinished. Stevenson was buried on Samoa, an island he had come to love very much.

Although Stevenson's novels are perhaps more accomplished, his short stories are also vivid and memorable. All show his power of invention, his command of the macabre and the eerie, and the psychological depth of his characterization.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (4)

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.