A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

Category: Picture Book
Title: A Selection of 24 Poems from a Child’s Garden of Verses
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Illustrator: Erik Blegvad
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 1978
Grade Level: 2-5
Genre: Poetry
Theme: Memories of childhood are pleasantly familiar, no matter who you are or how old you may be.
Number of Pages: Unpaged

Summary: This collection of poems brings to mind experiences of children everywhere through stories about nature, play activities and locations most readers would be familiar with, including a hay loft, a train and a backyard swing.

Evaluation: The selections in this book are narrative poems, telling stories of childhood memories that could be real or imagined. The range of ideas featured would make the book interesting to most readers. The majority of poems are made up of quatrains, with the first two lines and the last two lines rhyming in each. The rhyming would be appealing to readers. It sounds pleasant and is easy to read, particularly aloud. The illustrations are inviting, done in a surrealistic style with soft lines and pale colors, both cool and warm.