Winne-The-Pooh

Once a week, every week, I take my class to the library. For some pupils it’s something to enjoy. For others it’s a trial to endure. For me it’s as necessary as water. Without it, I doubt I'd survive.

Teaching takes its toll on the quiet. The job demands that one stands and leads, despite the opposite being at times preferable. Typically, I live my life as if I'm on Twitter. A 140 character limit on my interactions. I’ll say a few witty comments here and there, but then I’ll keep my counsel and retire to the daydream room.

Yet in the classroom talk is king. I can’t turn to my class and tell them to join me in silent meditation as we seek answers to literature’s great truths. No, I must use words as igniter fuel, hoping beyond hope for something to catch fire. I must hold court. Be an agent of talk. Take to the floor. Ask question after question. Interrogate the answers in response. Root out bias. Demand claims are evidenced. Question. Question. Question. All to try and answer life’s big question: Why on earth did George, a man of pragmatism, leave Lennie, an accident waiting to happen, completely unsupervised? The fool.

Why did you leave him, George?

But in the library I don’t have to talk. Court is in recess. I sit in the middle where my two eyes can keep an ear out for thirty mouths and I get my book out and read. Given that students will from time to time act in opposition to my hopes and dreams, I never choose a book that will demand 100% concentration. I still need to be alert to whispers and distractions. As a result, I’ll often pick a children’s book and get stuck into that. In the last year I’ve read Paddington, Matilda and War Horse. Yes, you the taxpayer have been paying me to read. You’re welcome.

Teenagers be quiet: Boss Man needs to read.

This week, I’ve been hearing a lot about Winnie-The-Pooh. This is because the story of its impact is the subject of a new film Goodbye, Christopher Robin. I haven’t seen the film, but I’ve heard the great Mark Kermode pronounce kindly on it. Whilst hearing him, I got to thinking: I’ve never actually read Winnie-The-Pooh. Sure, I’ve heard extracts from it: a Head of Year in my last school liked to illustrate her assemblies with Milne references. Yet I’ve never read a story all the way through. In fact, up until I sourced the book, I never knew it was so vast and wise. I just assumed it was a short picture book that could be turned and consumed in seconds.

Winnie-The-Pooh was a huge commercial success in the 1920’s. Like its author, the world had just come out of war; consequently, people were in desperate need of escape. Milne, a playwright and satirist, conceived the idea whilst at his East Sussex retreat. Seeing his son blur reality and fantasy while playing with his toys, Milne was inspired to create a world where he too clouded the truth: his beating heart of a boy Christopher would be transposed into a fictional world where his stuffed toys would be brought to life. In turning fact into fiction, Milne profited from his son. The balance sheet though would forever read loss. Unhappy with his childhood being made into a business, Christopher dissolved the partnership, shunning his parents in adulthood.

Milne and his son.

So the postscript of Winnie-The-Pooh is a sad one, but the tales themselves are far from depressing. Set in Ashdown Forest, where Milne and his family lived, the stories revolve around Christopher Robin’s toys, and the tales his father invented about them. There’s Pooh, the loyal, clumsy bear; Piglet, the shy, timid pig; Eeyore, a depressive donkey; Rabbit, a practical leader; and Owl, a learned creature. Over the course of the chapters, the characters get themselves into some classic scrapes, which typically end in Christopher Robin consoling his best friend Pooh.

Reading it, I see its DNA in the Toy Story franchise. Andy’s relationship with his toys change, just as Christopher’s does in the book's sequel, A House in Pooh Corner. Witnessing how a child neglects their toys can either be seen as a symbol of maturity or a shattering of innocence; whichever way you look at it, it's a moment of real power. Also, Pooh’s paw prints are all over Julia Donaldson’s superlative tale The Gruffalo: as Piglet’s head-to-head with the Heffalump is akin to Mouse’s confrontation with the Gruffalo. These are just two children’s stories that I can think of; I’m sure Milne’s inspiration is felt in many others.

Andy is like Christopher.

To dismiss the work as lightweight because it’s for children would be churlish though. The book is one adults find themselves reading to children, as opposed to the other way around. There is an economy to the writing, typifying all good children’s fiction; yet there is also a level of poeticism and profundity that would embarrass most adult writers.

Take this description of the Forest recovering from a flood:

ONE day when the sun had come back over the Forest, bringing with it the scent of may, and all the streams of the Forest were tinkling happily to find themselves their own pretty shape again, and the little pools lay dreaming of the life they had seen and the big things they had done, and in the warmth and quiet of the Forest the cuckoo was trying over his voice carefully and listening to see if he liked it, and wood-pigeons were complaining gently to themselves in their lazy comfortable way that it was the other fellow's fault, but it didn't matter very much; on such a day as this Christopher Robin whistled in a special way he had, and Owl came flying out of the Hundred Acre Wood to see what was wanted.

Milne has teased and tantalised an idyll from his pen. Just savour that language for a moment. Luxuriate on those verbs ‘tinkling’ and ‘whistling;’ bask in the hazy idleness of ‘complaining gently’ and float downstream with the ‘little pools’ that lie ‘dreaming of the life they had seen.’ This is the paradise Steinbeck painted at the beginning of Of Mice and Men; however, this is one that doesn’t succumb to the meanness of man; instead it represents the best of humanity, for man (Christopher) and nature (Winnie et al) work alongside one another to create a refuge of love and harmony. It’s a story that promoted peace and quiet at a time when people really needed it.

If you missed the book during your childhood, I recommend you pick it up now. To lift Milne's style: It’s a Sustaining Book that will bring you Great Comfort at a Time of Trumpian Upheaval. In a world of Terror and Cruelty, Pooh and his Forest are needed now more than ever.

Winnie-The-Pooh is available from all good bookshops.