On the centenary of A.A. Milne's most celebrated story, we are reminded that children's fiction needn't preach, panic, nor prescribe
Just over a century ago, A.A. Milne was at a loss.
It was an exceptionally cold winter in December 1925 and he was due to file a children’s story to the London Evening News for their Christmas Eve edition. Daphne, his wife, assured him that it was easy, urging him to write “any one of those bedtime stories”. Those stories in question, ones of “dragons and giants and gold rings”, said Milne, were not real stories at all, and wouldn’t do.
And then Milne threw his mind back to 1924, when in Punch and his first poetry collection When We Were Very Young, he’d published a curious little poem about a tubby tumbling Teddy Bear. Back to his wife, he said, “there was just one which was a real story”.
That Christmas Eve, the front page of the Evening News ran the headlines “Great Storm Spreads Over Derbyshire”, “Villages Lost” and “Mansion Fire”, but spanning boldly above them all, another proudly announced: “A CHILDREN’S STORY BY A.A. MILNE”. This was the first time the words “Winnie the Pooh” would appear in print, and that story would become chapter one in the teddy bear’s first devoted collection, released 100 years ago this year.
First published on 14th October 1926, Winnie the Pooh tells of the titular bear who went “bump, bump, bump” down the stairs. Since that first introduction, the lovable Pooh has had an untiring grip on children’s imaginations. The numbers are staggering. Milne’s original collected stories have sold over 50 million copies globally. Merchandise sales exceeded $5.9 billion by 2002.
There is no object, circumstance, or behaviour that shackles the stories to any particular era. Children were – and will always be – interested in “friends, food, birthdays, tree houses, expeditions, jokes and songs”, according to Milne biographer Ann Thwaite.
This is the constant realm of safety, and nature, and good, honest pillars of character. The challenges that the woodland troupe face are all natural ones: bad weather, bees, heffalumps (perhaps).
The animals are not picketing with the 1926 General Strike labourers, nor are they trying to reverse the economic strain caused by the return of the Gold Standard - there is “no urgent agenda”, says Neil Reed, the owner of Pooh Corner, a Winnie the Pooh museum in Ashdown Forest (where Milne drew inspiration for his “100 Acre Wood”). There is no mention of 1920s children’s paraphernalia like Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs or Raggedy Ann dolls… and therefore no head scratching from today’s youth. It really is easy access.
Milne decided against embellished illustration to accompany his stories, instead opting for the gentle and approachable artwork of E.H. Shepard. Groundbreakingly, the author decided that Shepard should have his own share of the royalties – the illustrator would almost always have received a flat fee for their efforts. It is clear that Milne valued Shepard’s contributions – they have done so much for the brand of the bear.
Children instantly recognize themselves in the charmingly clumsy Pooh, who accepts things without really understanding them, and whose rumbling tummy practically soundtracks the stories. He is occasionally brave and unselfish but often succumbs to low hanging fruits and unfounded fear. Reed says, “there’s a character for each one of us”, though he cautions against the internet’s tendency to attribute modern psychological disorders to each animal – “they definitely would not have been in Milne’s vocabulary”.
There is a crucially timeless lesson to be learned from the animal characters, adds Reed: “No matter what colour fluff we are, we’re all the same.” Christopher Robin is more parental, gently easing the group’s confusion and directing them with small doses of wisdom. “I wonder what Christopher Robin would do?”, the animals constantly ask themselves when met with trouble. He is who the child reader strives to be.
And then the language. Milne borrows from a treasure trove of nineteenth century nonsense writers like Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. His awareness of the powerful comic effects of gibberish can be traced back to his time editing Cambridge student magazine, Granta, where he wrote “Jeremy, I and the Jelly-fish”, a title described by legendary Punch contributor at the time, R.C. Lehmann, as “sparkling and entirely frivolous”.
It was these linguistic discrepancies and abrupt changes in vocabulary which so well suited the young reader’s mind, reflected their inadequacies, and challenged their short attention spans.
Though it is not just the young that lapped up A.A. Milne’s first famous collection. Following its publication, critics were keen to stress the dual register of the stories; it was at once “nonsense in the best tradition” but also had a “high seriousness about it”, as The New York Herald Tribune reported.
For The Nation, it was “another book full of delight for all children under seventy”, though it is curious that the septuagenarian is cut off. The most striking image of older-age appeal was brought by The Churchman, which said: “This book appears in childless New York apartments, in Pullman smokers [train carriages one could smoke in] and in doctor’s offices.”
The ‘high seriousness’ does not come across as blatant moral instruction. And this is what made it – what makes it – more appealing. Most children’s books prior to Winnie the Pooh were edged with religious fear, and at the turn of the twentieth century moved more to teach the child how to conduct themselves politely in society. The instruction and moral correction generally tried to hide behind narratives and plots as thin as bible paper.
Winnie the Pooh was of course different. “For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain”, says Pooh almost self-congratulatory; the narrative forces never try to alter his character, they coexist with it, resolving to reach a satisfying end to the story without any alarming corrective surgery. There is no rigid hierarchy that the Victorian Sunday school stories insisted upon, no condemning teacher, and no stone monolith of edicts to adhere to.
It was a gasp of fresh air for older readers. It still is.
A good chunk of modern children’s fiction is now pre-occupied with training the next generation against worldly issues like climate change, big tech and social injustice. I took to looking at the ‘what’s new’ children’s fiction section of my library in Battersea, and though small and anecdotal, the evidence was laid bare.
Three books in particular caught my eye.
The first was Love Ssega’s Wanzu Sets Sail, a book ostensibly about adventure on the high seas, except the high seas are getting higher because of generational neglect of the environment and the children (not the adults) must save “Sealand’s” population from drowning.
The second, Amy Bearce’s Planet Perfect, whose blurb begins with: “Meg wants to fight climate change, not play games.” Can’t the pre-teens play games first, and then maybe begin to think about climate change?
Finally, there was Reek by Alistair Chisholm, a book subtitled: “who will win in the fight to breathe”. It is, I find out, about a child who wages war against a businessman billionaire who has monopolised breathable air in a world that is suffocating because of pollution. Children readers get both barrels: big tech and climate crisis.
What plenty of them miss is the immediate problems that children ought to be concerned with. Problems like: understanding your peers; combating loneliness; the joy of friendship; the excitement of small adventure. Like Winnie the Pooh, books shouldn’t ask too much of their reader – they should be a pleasurable experience, dealing with personal, and relatively low-stake issues.
Crikey, don’t children have it hard enough without having to worry about fixing the world?
