Oh noes! You may want to leave this blog in disgust RIGHT NOW. This is because I am about to slag off Robert Louis Stevenson. Actually, that's not quite true; I'm going to slag off A Child's Garden Of Verses, or rather, it's suitability as a book for children today.
ACGOV was published in 1885, and I got given a copy at my seventh birthday party nearly 100 years later, by the daughter of the snobbiest lady in the village. She probably thought it was a lovely gift for a child. According to a lot of the internet it's a "timeless classic" full of "cherished" poems that would "last a lifetime". Shame I was given the Puffin paperback copy that has long since fallen to bits (not through being loved to death, might I add).
Once again, I've recently picked up the twin of my childhood book in a charity shop. I can remember, at seven, being vaguely bemused by the old-fashioned poems. There weren't any that I particularly liked, which was a shame because I did really like some poetry at this age, and was inspired to write my own - my teacher even gave my best friend and myself special exercise books just for this purpose, which other kids in the class weren't given. Hooray for Mrs Brooks! She was the most inspirational teacher I ever had.
ANYWAY. I am putting off writing about A Child's Garden Of Verses. I don't want to dislike it; it's a product of its time and I'm sure my great grandmother (born 1884) would have loved it. I'm also sure Robert Louis Stevenson didn't forsee children reading it over a century later. But please, kindly, well-meaning, snobby middle-class mothers, buy a copy of Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes instead of this outdated naffety next time you come to buy something for little Naomi to take along to her common little schoolfriend's birthday.
Overt moralising will always grate, and children do come fitted with a large bullshit detector these days. This sort of poem annoyed the hell out of my childhood self, and that was back in the 1980s!:-
Whole Duty Of Children
A child should always say what's true,
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at the table:
At least as far as he is able.
On second thoughts, I can't believe even my great-gran would have enjoyed this sort of thing. Good thing she couldn't actually read.
Good and Bad Children
Children, you are very little
And your bones are very brittle;
If you want to grow tall and stately,
You must learn to walk sedately.
You must still be bright and quiet,
And content with simple diet;
And remain, through all bewild'ring
Innocent and honest children....
There are several more verses of that one. Ick. On the next page is that poem about foreign children ("Oh! Don't you wish you were me?") though to be fair it is surprisingly not as patronising as it could be. Never mind, this one makes up for it:
System
Every night my prayers I say,
And get my dinner every day;
And every day that I've been good
I get an orange after food.
The child that is not clean and neat,
With lots of toys and things to eat,
He is a naughty child, I'm sure -
Or else his dear papa is poor.
Ouch.
I am being very harsh, because the book isn't composed purely of po-faced Victorian moralising. There are some nice poems which are quite pleasant to read as an adult: "Where go the boats?" is one, "My Shadow" is another. Sadly, as a child these poems just made me go "meh". They're all rather introspective, with none of the fun and vibrancy of A.A. Milne's Now We Are Six or Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense Poems:
The Cow
The friendly cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart.
She wanders lowing here and there,
And yet she cannot stray,
All in the pleasant open air,
The pleasant light of day;
And blown by all the winds that pass
And wet with all the showers,
She walks among the meadow grass
And eats the meadow flowers.
Zzzzzz. So there you are....I expect the RLS society (I presume there is one, somewhere) will have a price on my head now. I'll try to atone by doing a review of Treasure Island sometime, though I'll have to read it first, because sadly ACGOV put me off reading any more Stevenson if I could help it.
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