Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. He was an intelligent but sickly child and so he started to make up stories to entertain himself. He once wrote, 'I have three powerful impressions of childhood: my sufferings when I was sick, my delights in convalescence at my grandfather's manse of Colinton, near Edinburgh, and the unnatural activity of my mind after I was in bed at night.' During the summer of 1881, Stevenson and his family were staying in a cottage in Braemar in Scotland. One afternoon he began drawing a map to amuse his stepson, but found that he himself was carried away, 'As I pored upon my map of "Treasure Island", the future characters of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods: and their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters ... the next thing I knew, I had some papers before me and was writing out a list of chapters'. And so Treasure Island was begun and published in 1881. Robert Louis Stevenson is the author of Kidnapped and The Children's Garden of Verses as well as the adult book, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. During his short life Stevenson travelled the world from the South Pacific to the USA, Europe to Australia. He died at the age of 44 years old on a small Samoan island in the Pacific.
Gr 1 Up Eleven editions of this classic are in print, including those illustrated by Tasha Tudor (Rand McNally, 1981), Jessie W. Smith (Scribners, 1905) and Brian Wildsmith (Oxford University Pr, 1984), yet Foreman's work lives on its own terms. His pen and ink-wash drawings and watercolors evoke both the dream world of a child's imagination and the real world of today. The child in ``My Shadow'' and the nude sprite in ``The Flowers'' are both wearing tennis shoes. ``To My Mother'' pictures a woman in jeans. What could be trite or trendy is instead fresh and modern and unstuffy. The book is meticulously laid out, and Mary Thwaite's introduction is clear and concise. But the core of this lovely book is Robert Louis Stevenson's poetry, which remains original, inspiring and wonder-provoking after a century. One may well wince at the underlying chauvinism of ``Foreign Children,'' but most of the poems still sing. Foreman clearly understands how to ``. . .sing your praise, /Happy chimney-corner days, /Sitting safe in nursery nooks, /Reading picture story-books. . . .'' Kathleen D. Whalin, New Canaan Library, Conn.
This compendium of information ``for, by and about young people'' features chapters on sports celebrities, health, games, clubs, history, law and science. (9-up)
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