A Child's Garden of Verses
A Child's Garden of Verses
Stevenson wrote these poems from inside a child's mind, not looking in from outside, and that makes all the difference. Here are sixty-four small verses about climbing cherry trees to see foreign lands, sailing boats down streams, waiting for the lamplighter to come home, and making worlds out of bedsheets. But there's a ache underneath the joy, a bittersweet knowledge that these moments are passing even as they're happening. 'The Land of Counterpane' captures the kingdom a child builds from pillows, 'My Shadow' wonders at the strange companion who grows and shrinks. These aren't poems about childhood nostalgia written by an adult looking back; they're poems written by a man who remembered what it actually felt like to be small, to be afraid of the dark, to long for adventures, to love home. The world of a child is both magnificent and fragile, and Stevenson understood that perfectly. This is the book adults read to children and then quietly keep reading after the little ones fall asleep, because it reminds them of something they've lost and can almost, almost touch again.
