1 h 3 minAudiobook4 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A bed becomes a country, a garden becomes an ocean, and childhood opens its eyes.
In A Child's Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson sees the world from a pillow, a nursery floor and a small chair. These short poems explore bedtime, shadows, rain and play through a child's eyes. Ordinary things become places of adventure, while the rules of grown-ups can seem strange from down below.
In The Land of Counterpane, toy soldiers and ships fill a sick child's bed, and folded blankets become hills and bays. Pirate Story turns play into a voyage of imagined danger. Rain looks out at fields, umbrellas and ships. Clear rhymes and steady rhythms make these small worlds a pleasure to speak aloud.
What you’ll discover
- A country of bedclothes Explore the hills and bays a child discovers among the folds of a sickbed.
- Adventure close to home Follow children whose games bring sailors and the dangers of the sea into familiar places.
- Rules with a wink Meet the manners adults expect in the brief, playful Whole Duty of Children.
- Rain across the world Notice how a simple shower connects fields, umbrellas and ships in one cheerful poem.
- Rhymes worth saying aloud Enjoy short quatrains and couplets whose clear sounds and steady beat stay in the ear.
Who will love it
You will love it if you enjoy rhymes to read aloud, nursery memories, pirate games, bedtime moods, or poems that treat a child's imagination with warmth and respect.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Stevenson writes from inside a child's world
- Play turns ordinary rooms into whole worlds
- Night and sleep bring wonder and a little fear
- Gardens, seasons and far lands widen the child's view
- The grown man looks back with love
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Jardín de versos para niños
by Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885
A child sails his bed across the dark, and a shadow trails him through the house, in poems about play.
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In short
What does a child see when the lamp goes out and the night comes marching in? In A Child's Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson answers with short poems about beds that sail, shadows that follow and gardens that become whole kingdoms.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Stevenson writes from inside a child's world
The book is a collection of short poems for and about children, written by Robert Louis Stevenson. It opens with a dedication to his nurse, Alison Cunningham, whom he thanks for watching over him through sick nights and for reading him stories. That thanks sets the tone for everything that follows.
Most poems speak in the first person, in the voice of a small child. The child notices what a child would notice: a swing, a cherry tree, the rustle of an aunt's skirts, rain falling on umbrellas and ships. Grown-up concerns stay at the edge of the frame.
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What is A Child's Garden of Verses about?
It is a collection of short poems about childhood, told mostly in a child's own voice. They cover play, bedtime, gardens, seasons, travel dreams and the fears and joys of a small child's day.
Who wrote A Child's Garden of Verses?
Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish author who died in 1894. He is also known for Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Who is the book dedicated to?
It is dedicated to Alison Cunningham, Stevenson's nurse. He thanks her for sitting up with him through sick nights, reading him stories and comforting him, and calls her his second mother.
The author
Robert Louis Stevenson
1850–1894 · Scottish novelist and poet
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist and poet, born in Edinburgh in 1850. He wrote Treasure Island (1883), A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885), and Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). He settled in Samoa in 1890 and died there in 1894.
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