By Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson's 1885 poems written from a small child's point of view, short enough to read one at bedtime.
These are poems about being little. There's the swing that takes you 'up in the air and over the wall,' the shadow that goes in and out the door with you, the misery of being sent to bed while it's still bright out in summer, the whole country you build out of toys across the blanket on a day home sick. Stevenson wrote them looking back on his own childhood, which was often lonely and often spent ill in bed, and each one is short enough to read in a single breath and made to be said out loud.
Each poem is tiny and complete, so it fits the odd scraps of time a bedtime actually gives you: one poem, or five, with no plot to lose your place in. That's what makes it an easy first book of poetry. A young child hears what rhythm and rhyme feel like from the inside, without anyone turning it into a lesson. The illustrated editions are lovely enough to sit out on a shelf, and a lot of these verses have a way of staying with a person for years. I still have 'The Swing' more or less by heart and never once set out to learn it.