Dream Blocks — A Closer Reading

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In Category - Fantasy Juvenile Worlds

Authors: Higgins, Aileen Cleveland, 1882-, Smith, Jessie Willcox, 1863-1935 [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2013 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Children's poetry; Conduct of life -- Juvenile poetry; Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile poetry Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 6,760

Reading time 30 min

Text sections 2

The catalog record for Dream Blocks — A Closer Reading provides practical reading context through 6,760 words, 30 min estimated reading time, and 2 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 22.1 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Children's poetry,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #41945

Aileen Cleveland Higgins's Dream Blocks (1908) is a collection of 38 poems for children, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. The verses explore a child's inner world through concrete imagery—dream-blocks, anagrams, doorsteps, and a gypsy ring—where ordinary objects become gateways to imagination, fear, and moral reflection.

Editorial Edition Score 4.5/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg41945

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Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original lovely illustrations. See 41945-h.htm or 41945-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41945/41945-h/41945-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41945/41945-h.zip)

Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://archive.org/details/dreamblocks00higg

AILEEN CLEVELAND HIGGINS

Pictures by Jessie Willcox Smith

Duffield & Company New York

Page Dream Blocks 1 Stupid You 2 Anagrams 3 Doorsteps 4 The Big Clock 6 The New Dress 7 A Questioning 9 A Test 9 A Quandary 10 Spring Music 11 A Compromise 13 A Rainy Day 14 An Appeal to Science 15 The Runaway 17 Playmates 19 The Echo 21 The Sick Rose 22 Afternoon 23 The Wild 24 Bud Music 25 Frills 26 Gone Somewhere 27 The Chosen Dream 29 Home 30 Dawn 31 The City Tree 32 A Prayer 34 Cap and Bells 35 Summer's Passing 38 When You Wait 39 Punishment 40 First Pity 40 Night 41 Hover-Time 42 Treasure Craft 43 The Moon Path 45 The Ring Charm 45

Facing Page Title Page ii Dream Blocks 1 Stupid You 2 Doorsteps 4 The Big Clock 6 A Quandary 10 A Rainy Day 14 The Runaway 18 The Sick Rose 22 Frills 26 Home 30 A Prayer 34 Summer's Passing 38 Punishment 40 Treasure Craft 44

Engravings by the Beck Engraving Co.

Presswork by S. H. Burbank & Co. Philadelphia

WITH dream-blocks I can build A castle to the sky. No one can shake it down, Though he may try and try, Except myself, and then, I make another one, And shape it as I please. This castle-building fun Nobody takes away, And what I like the best-- The dream-blocks change each day.

THERE is a shining thread To-day in my rose-bed-- A magic net the fairies have outspread To catch the dewy sweet--and yet you said It was a cobweb there instead!

TO-DAY when I played anagrams, I spelled a long word out-- A word named _sorrow_--then I tried To change it all about To make it spell another word. My mother said, "There is a way To make the sorrow-word spell peace." I've tried and tried, almost all day; I've turned the letters round and round, This way and that, to find out how, And yet I can not find the way, And supper time is coming now.

I TAKE my broom and sweep my step, To make it smooth and brown; Then I sit down and wait with Jep Until the sun goes down.

I think some day that I may see A little brownie elf Peep out of there, and speak to me, When I am by myself.

I like my roses at the side, Much better than the flower-row Along your path where people ride. I leave my roses just to grow.

I like the place that's broken, too, With splintered edges all around, And grasses growing right up through, That smell so fresh like dew and ground.

Your steps are nice, but then my own Seem nicer somehow, just for me; Pine steps are more like home than stone, For once they lived and were a tree.

OUR Big Clock goes so slow, When I am waiting on the stairs, With nice, clean clothes on, dressed to go Out with Aunt Beth to see the bears And funny possums at the Zoo! But oh, at night how fast Our Big Clock goes! It's very rude To company, and when time's past When I must always go to bed, The hands just fly in wicked glee. It strikes out long ahead And makes them all look round at me.

I HAVE a very pretty dress, It's made of pink and white, And there are ribbons on it, too, Which make it bright.

And yet I think I like it less Than this dear other one-- The worn-out, patched-up blue I wear when I have fun.

It clings to me as if it loved To have me wear it every day. The pink stands out so straight and stiff It's in my way.

How can I get to know it well, When it's so _Sunday_-clean? Perhaps when it is old and stained With dust and grass, it will not seem So strange and dignified as now. But then I think I never _could_ make mud pies right If I had on my pink.

I WONDER, when I die, If some one there will see, And hold me close, And take good care of me, As when I came on earth to be A little child?

SOME day when I've had lots to eat, Then I should like to be A ragged beggar child, A little while, to see If you--and _you_--are kind.

WHEN they are tall and all grown up, I wonder where the children go? I wonder how one finds the place-- My mother says she doesn't know.

Continue Reading →

The title poem, “Dream Blocks,” establishes the collection’s central metaphor: a child builds castles from “dream-blocks” that no one else can shake, and which “change each day.” This image of impermanent, self-made worlds recurs throughout the book. In “Stupid You,” a speaker chides an adult for dismissing a cobweb as mere dirt, insisting it is a fairy net. The tension between adult literalism and a child’s imaginative perception drives many poems. “Anagrams” literalizes transformation: the child tries to rearrange the letters of “sorrow” to spell “peace,” but cannot find the solution by supper time—a concrete, unresolved puzzle that mirrors the book’s gentle treatment of difficulty.

Domestic Thresholds and Wild Edges

Several poems locate the child at a boundary between home and the unknown. In “Doorsteps,” the speaker sweeps a pine step and waits for a brownie elf, preferring the “broken” step with grasses growing through to a neighbor’s stone path. The step is both a literal threshold and a perch for fantasy. “The City Tree” contrasts a tree “that grows in the city street” with rural trees, noting how it “tries to be / A tree, but cannot.” The child’s voice observes without moralizing. “Home” (not excerpted in full) likely continues this theme. These poems ground wonder in specific, modest settings—a doorstep, a city tree—rather than in faraway lands.

The Child’s Logic and Moral Puzzles

Higgins often presents ethical questions through a child’s practical reasoning. In “A Test,” the speaker proposes a test of friendship that involves sharing a secret; the poem ends without revealing the outcome, leaving the reader to consider the test’s fairness. “Punishment” (excerpted only in part) asks “what is the use of it?”—a direct challenge to adult discipline. “First Pity” describes finding a hurt bird: “I want to make it well— / I wish my hands knew how!” The poem stops at the wish, not the cure. These pieces avoid neat resolutions, instead capturing the child’s incomplete understanding and genuine perplexity.

Twilight, Night, and the Unseen

A cluster of poems explores the transition from day to dark. “Hover-Time” names the hour “between the light and dark” when “new insect cries” emerge and “the first bat circles.” The child notes that daytime things “are afraid of Eyes,” implying that night allows a different kind of seeing. “Night” confesses, “I do not like to say good-night,” because the dark is “such a wonder-world.” The speaker’s prayers are “hard to say” because the Dark “calls.” “The Ring Charm” introduces a gypsy-given ring that keeps away “the Woops that creep / About my bed when I’m asleep.” The charm is a tangible object that wards off formless fears, blending superstition with comfort.

Loss, Craft, and Persistence

Several poems treat loss as a natural part of play. In “Treasure Craft,” the child launches petal boats that “always go away from me,” sinking or disappearing. The speaker admits, “I’ve lost some things I love the best,” but concludes, “I love much more the sailing-fun, / And launch new ships when morning sings.” The emphasis is on the process, not the outcome. “Gone Somewhere” (title only in contents) likely continues this theme. “The Moon Path” imagines walking a moonbeam to find “the one / Who sings the Silver Song”—a quest that remains unfulfilled in the excerpt. The collection closes with “The Ring Charm,” whose ritual of kissing and turning the ring “three times for sake of luck” suggests an ongoing, hopeful practice.

Reading Dream Blocks sequentially reveals a careful architecture: the opening poems establish imaginative play and its limits; middle poems test moral and emotional boundaries; later poems confront fear and loss with concrete rituals. The child’s voice remains consistent—curious, stubborn, and unsentimental. Jessie Willcox Smith’s illustrations (not reproduced here) likely amplify the domestic settings and twilight moods. Readers may wish to track recurring objects (steps, rings, boats, clocks) and note how the child’s relationship to them shifts across the collection.

I keep coming back to Higgins’s dream-blocks—the way a child’s ordinary doorstep can hold an entire universe of quiet fear and wonder. It reminds me of the older holiday poems in A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems — Background and Themes, where the same unhurried magic lingers, almost by accident, between the lines. Some books simply wait for you to remember them.