biography of Robert Louis Stevenson

I only have two on my shelves:

Robert Louis Stevenson:  Author of A Child’s Garden of Verses by  Carol Green – This is a Rookie Biography, simple but not very engaging.  It has many photos. 45 pages

Robert Louis Stevenson:  Storyteller and Adventurer – From the Piper Books series, an older OOP series that is usually very good, though I haven’t read this one.  It begins:  “The little boy in the large four-poster bed was very busy.  Before him on the snowy counterpane (bedspread) were dozens of lead soldiers.  There were foot soldiers, men on horseback, and a few generals in full dress uniform.  There were toy cannons and supply wagons.  A fierce battle was raging.”   187 pages

We just read through the Piper biography (which was written by Katherine Wilkie) and we loved it! It was very engaging and interesting. We read through a chapter per week so it took my first grader quite a while to get through it, but she always wanted to read “just a little bit more” each time we put it away. 🙂 (To me that’s the sign of a good book!) The book gave us quite a bit of insight into the stories behind not only his Child’s Garden of Verses, but his many novels as well.

I second Robin that the Piper biographies are very good and worth the purchase!

~Anna