Platypus Thoughts

A.A.(Alan Alexander) Milne is one of my favorite authors. I have original copies of his Winnie the Pooh books as well as his children’s poems. These belonged to my mother and uncle when they were children.

I loved to read Winnie the Pooh stories to my children when they were very young. I would still read them to my children if they would allow it. But even my granddaughter is much too worldly at 18 to humor me.

When we bought our first house, I painted a 3-foot tall Winnie the Pooh hanging on to a red balloon on the wall over my son’s bed. I had copied the image from a Golden Story Book by making a grid on the wall and over the picture in the book. I replicated Pooh one square at a time. I was quite pleased with my masterpiece. And I’m quite sure the next owners painted right over it.

Milne’s poems are witty and fun and memorable. I often amuse myself by quoting lines from them (or surprise myself that I remembered one). I thought that one day I would write poems and stories that would amuse me and hopefully other children.

It wasn’t until I started looking for a picture of Milne that I learned that life in the Milne family was not all about fun and games with stuffed animals. No one goes through life without struggle, pain, sorrow and regret. And certainly, the Milne family had their share.

Fun fact: Winnie-the-Pooh’s debut was actually in a poem entitled “Teddy Bear” that appeared in Punch magazine in 1924. This may have been the first published writing about body image. It’s worth a read.

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Photo credit: A. A. Milne, with his son Christopher Robin and the original Pooh Bear, photographed in the year that Winnie-the-Pooh was first published (1926). By Howard Coster.
The Winnie the Pooh illustrations are in the public domain.