“Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.” A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)
AAM was born in London on this day in 1882 and died in Sussex in January the year I was born.
Well-educated, Cambridge, a Veteran, he was married and had one son, Christopher Robin Milne.
He was a successful playwright and poet but did not become the iconic children’s author that has warmed the hearts of children of all ages for the last hundred years until he penned Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)
and The House at Pooh Corner (1928).
The two books are centered around AAM’s son Christopher Robin and his coterie of animated toys – a stuffed, simple and kind bear named Winnie-the-Pooh, that had been purchased for CR from Harrods in London, an irascible Rabbit, a melancholic donkey Eeyore, a bouncy tiger Tigger, a warmhearted kangaroo Kanga and her baby Roo, a wise Owl and a sweet and shy Piglet.
Those stuffed toys – minus Roo, who was lost during childhood in an apple orchard – now live forever on display at the 5th Avenue and 42nd Street Branch Public Library’s Rare Book Division (donated in 1987 by AAM’s American publisher, E.P. Dutton). Note, that library is a setting for some of the adventures in Free Radical.
These characters inhabit the “100 Aker Woods” (the Hundred Acre Wood) and share simple adventures and interactions demonstrating an instructive empathy, friendship, acceptance and kindness not often found in the real world. Like with JM Barrie’s Peter Pan the lost boys and Neverland, and Frank Baum’s Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion in Oz, the stories’ offered attraction at the beginning of the last century that suffered through wars and economic depression was an alternative creative world where readers – even adults – could escape from the mundanity and tediousness of daily existence.
And that is what good stories do. They remove you while you are reading from wherever you may be and take you to a place with special characters that become family and offer plausible magic and thrills and tell you unexpected stories that invoke emotions like love, happiness, sadness, loss and joy and demonstrate virtues like loyalty and bravery. Most of all, if they are any good, and hope to stand the test of time, the stories teach acceptance.
Today’s world can be a troubling place, and needs places like the 100 Aker Woods, Neverland, Oz and even Casa Claire, to allow us all to escape somewhere with characters you enjoy being around and where the day-to-day world cannot reach us.
So, Happy Birthday AA Milne, you brought a lot of happiness into this world that continues to impact each generation lucky enough to be exposed to your work.
Now, my fine, five readers, I hope Sunday allows you all to escape somewhere that makes you happy.
Me? I have my Casa Claire chores to do, where I get to hang around with Claire and her company of feral and domestic creatures here on a mystical spot of land thinking creative thoughts. It’s where I’ll always be playing with my magical mule, Claire.
But no matter what else we get up to, let us make today a great one.
