The Little Land

Reviewed: October 22, 2002
By: Text by Robert Louis Stevenson Art by Kim Fernandes
Publisher: Kids Can Press
24 Pages, $14.95

In 1885 Robert Louis Stevenson published A Child’s Garden of Verses, a classic volume which included this poem, “The Little Land”.

In 2002 Kim Fernandes applied her own particular vision to the story her told and brought it to life all over again.

Stevenson chose to explore the land of daydreams in his poem, that odd little land in which disconnected events flow by so “logically” that a person caught up in one quite fails to notice how strange it all is until the narrative flow is somehow broken.

The poem speaks of the “fairy land afar where the Little People are.” Fernandes has chosen to take this daydream out into the garden where a drastically reduced little boy, bored after watching the rain pour down the window panes all day, is able to play with a group of friendly, oversized bugs and make the most of what the rain has left behind.

Fernandes works in a pliable modeling material called Fimo which gives her books a characteristic three dimensional look, as well as brilliant colouring. Even the night scenes sparkle.

This is a very nice reinterpretation of a classic tale.

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