cover image A Child's Garden of Verses: A Classic Illustrated Edition

A Child's Garden of Verses: A Classic Illustrated Edition

Robert Louis Stevenson, Chronicle Books. Chronicle Books, $6.99 (20pp) ISBN 978-0-8118-4168-9

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.)