Sprinkles reviews When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne

Today Sprinkles reviews a cute little poetry book, When We Were Very Young, written by A.A. Milne, illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard, and originally published in 1924.

Today I am excited to share with the readers of the book bunnies blog a wonderful little book of poetry, written over a hundred years ago, in 1924. If you are curious, you can read the poems in their entirety here in the Project Gutenberg page for the book. But I have to say that holding the book in your hands (or, as in my case, in your paws) is a real pleasure. The illustrations by the estimable Ernest H. Shepard are simple and yet timeless.

A.A. Milne wrote the poems in this book for his son Christopher Robin, who was four at the time. In his introduction he tells us that these verses often should be read as if they are coming from the voice of Christopher Robin or another young child, and when you read them out loud, that is almost always the feeling you get. And so I can imagine a young bunny and an adult one who loves them sitting down to read a few of them at a time and having a really wonderful time together.

There are a total of forty-four poems in the book. Many of them reflect different aspects of a young child’s life or zero in on small moments that loom large. There is a poem about the pleasure of being in the rain with waterproof outerwear (“Happiness”), another about how the four different chairs in the nursery could be different places and make for fun adventures all on their own (“Nursery Chairs”), and yet another about the joys of simply being outside without a purpose to go any particular place (“Spring Morning”). Then there are more playful poems about made-up characters and their stories. There is for example a poem about an elephant who is friends with a lion who is friends with a goat who is friends with a snail (“The Four Friends”), another about a dormouse who loves geraniums and delphiniums but is prescribed by a doctor to grow chrysanthemums instead (“The Dormouse and the Doctor”), and yet another about an alchemist who after years of effort is still unable to get it quite right (“The Alchemist”).

Two of my other favorites in the book were the one about rice pudding (unsurprisingly named “Rice Pudding”) and the one titled “Lines and Squares” about why you should stay in the squares and never step on the lines when walking on a sidewalk–for otherwise a bear will eat you!

And then there is the thirty-eighth poem, “Teddy Bear”, which starts with:

A bear, however hard he tries,
Grows tubby without exercise.
Our Teddy Bear is short and fat
Which is not to be wondered at;
He gets what exercise he can
By falling off the ottoman,
But generally seems to lack
The energy to clamber back

And then there are twelve more stanzas with similar rhyme and goofiness. The poem finishes in the way it started, but with a twist:

A bear, however hard he tries,
Grows tubby without exercise.
Our Teddy Bear is short and fat
Which is not to be wondered at.
But do you think it worries him
To know that he is far from slim?
No, just the other way about--
He's proud of being short and stout. 

And thus we see the birth of a little creature who would eventually become the world’s most famous bear: Winnie the Pooh! Ernest Shepard was apparently thinking of the teddy bear his son had while drawing the illustrations for the poem. These illustrations and Christopher Robin’s own toys together led to A.A. Milne creating the Winnie the Pooh character in the stories in the next couple years.

But even if you are not intrigued by Winnie the Pooh or his origin story, the poems in this book are lovely. And they are such a pleasure to read! Their simple melodies and sweet themes would also make them wonderful candidates for reading out loud with a younger bunny in your life. In other words, as Marshmallow would put it: if you are searching for a neat book to read out loud with the young bunny in your life or if you are simply looking for a lovely poetry collection about the magic of childhood to bring a smile to your face and a bit of childlike joy into your heart, then this might be the book for you!