What could be more fun that reading a book of poetry about what it feels like to be almost six years old? Okay. Actually being almost six is probably more fun! But since all of us here are past that age, we'll have to make do with the vicarious fun of poetry such as this. And it's hard to imagine how one could find a more enjoyable collection than the one penned by A.A. Milne, beloved author of the Winnie the Pooh stories.
I'm writing this review in honor of the 124th anniversary of Mr. Milne's birthday. Born January 18, 1882 (he died in 1956) A.A. Milne has given many of us, children and grown-ups alike, moments of pure pleasure through his sweet and humorous stories and verses.
My copy of Now We Are Six is a worn paperback of the Dell/Yearling edition (which was on its 18th printing already in this 1979 copy). The original copyright of the collection is 1927, so as you can imagine many of the poems have a very old-fashioned feel to them. Now We Are Six was published in between Milne's first collection of Pooh stories and its sequel The House at Pooh Corner.
The top of my 1979 paperback reads "Pooh-poetry and much, much more!" Perhaps the "much, much more" should be emphasized, since there are only a handful of poems in the whole collection that specifically mention Pooh and Christopher Robin by name. Milne casually mentions in the introduction that Pooh wandered into the book looking for Piglet, and "sat down on some of the pages by mistake" and that's about what it feels like. However, many of the charming pen and ink drawings by Ernest H. Shepard, who also illustrated the Pooh volumes, give us pictures of boys and bears who, if not Pooh and Christopher Robin, must be their cousins. Some of the pictures actually feature Pooh, and you'll spot Piglet, Kanga and Eeyore a few times too. But since many of the poems concern children and playthings, it doesn't take much of an imaginative stretch to consider Christopher Robin and Pooh as protagonists unless the poem specifies otherwise. Younger children hungry for lots more Pooh might be disappointed, but older children (say those who are just about six, and a little beyond) will likely enjoy this for what it is.
My own little girl, now three and a half, has already enjoyed many of the poems, primarily because of their rollicking rhythms and fun rhymes. We've discovered that they're good reading for family car trips. Some of the verses are short, but a number of the poems are longer narrative poems that tell a (usually silly) story. Although Milne was clearly trying to climb inside a child's imagination, and succeeded admirably in remembering the kinds of games, stories, questions and curiosities that adorn early childhood, there's a grown-up sophistication at work on many levels too, both in the skillful, playful way he works with language, and in a few places where adults will chuckle knowingly.
There's almost a Seussian sensibility to some of the verses:
I think I am a Traveller escaping from a Bear;
I think I am an Elephant,
Behind another elephant,
BehindanotherElephant who isn't really there...
Of course, Dr. Suess didn't publish his first book until 10 years later, so perhaps I should say Seuss was rather Milnian!
Milne addresses many topics of interest to children, seasons and stages most of us can well remember. There's the matter of being sick in bed, having to endure medicine and doctor visits:
Christopher Robin
Had wheezles
And sneezles,
They bundled him
Into
His bed.
They gave him what goes
With a cold in his nose,
And some more for a cold
In the head.
And so on, almost ad infinitum, sending my daughter into plenty of giggles.
Then there's the matter of what to do to amuse oneself on a rainy day:
Let it rain!
Who cares?
I've a train
Upstairs,
With a brake
Which I make
From a string
Sort of thing...
So that's what I make,
When the day's all wet.
It's a good sort of brake
But it hasn't worked yet.
Other poems deal with the excitement of catching a bug, only to lose it and find it again; the joys of pretending to be a bear (one of my daughter's favorite pastimes!); the delights of going fishing; the oddities of the questions grown-ups tend to ask (especially "have you been a good girl?" why would any child ever admit otherwise?).
In addition to the poems that deal directly with life from a child's point of view, there are several long, rather nonsensical story poems. Our whole family enjoys The Knight Whose Armour Didn't Squeak and The Emperor's Rhyme. In general, Milne likes writing of knights, kings, princes and dragons, and of little children wandering the countryside, dreaming of what it might be like to inhabit such stories.
By and large this volume has aged very well. There are a few places here and there, where the ideas and language seem antiquated enough to be quaint, but any child willing and ready to step into, say, Mary Poppins shouldn't have a problem stepping into these verses. There are also a few places, from a grown-up point of view, that feel almost overly sentimental...one can't help but feel that Milne sometimes painted childhood with a brush full of golden paint. But where I might sense that, you might not -- I think it's a matter of taste. And when it comes to nostalgia, a golden brush is pretty understandable. For the most part, I don't mind a slightly idealistic look back at some of childhood's funny and happier moments.
All in all, this is a lovely poetry collection that can be enjoyed by anyone before six to well past sixty. Thank you, A.A. Milne. And happy 124th birthday!
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