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.

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.

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

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)