The Golden Age of Children's Literature

For hundreds of years human culture has been writing stories, now the question is what drives them to write that story? Is it because they want to capture that perfect moment? Is it because they want to teach a lesson? Is it because they love doing so? Is it to entertain, explain, or scare? To me, all of these are reasons why people write stories. But what is the root of all this? Where does it come from?

The Golden Age of Children’s Literature started from 1860 with the book called The Water Babies by Charles Kinsley and up until the first World War, A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. It was a period where there was this really excellent blossoming of Children’s Books,and it was during the Edwardian Era and the Victorian Era. The children’s books gave liberation. The books were not meant for education or instruction but merely for entertainment. That period established the way of talking to children in a very friendly way which has been adopted in the 20^th century. Books like Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, and Wind in the Willows all survived. These books front problems which children’s books didn’t before. All of this come together in this period of change. When the world was changing, when the politics was changing and children’s book responded to it.

Alright, I want to take a moment and think of that 1 person who matters the most to everyone in your family. Could be one of your sibling, or you yourself. Just one…okay go. This is going to be really disappointing but I want you to imagine one day that person just disappears from your life and never comes back or even worse dies. J.M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan although he was born into a happy family, the sudden death of his most gifted brother David destroyed his family. He was born during the Victorian Era and lived through the Edwardian Era and his personal tragedy gave him the idea of boyhood always in his mind. When his mother went into a shock he had to take the role of his brother to comfort his mother in her distress. By becoming a living version of David, Jamie’s relation with his mother strengthened. Nonetheless, he failed to grow up because he didn’t have an identity for himself. In the later years when he used to take his dog for a walk he came across the Davies family because their children used to be out in the park, playing with their nanny. He soon became hooked with the Davies family, visited them often and became they eventually became very good friends. They had four boys and a girl. The four boys in the family reminded him of his own boyhood and considered them his living versions of his ideal of boyhood. Peter Pan is a wish fulfillment story of triumph of youth over age. Barrie uses his story to escape from reality and form his life into a living story. Peter Pan enters into the lives of the Darling family and teaches them to fly and off they went to Neverland. After their adventure in Neverland, Peter pan can’t join the Darling family when they are reunited, and he remains the outsider much like Barrie himself as the outsider in the Davies Family later in the years.

Similar to J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Graham, the author of The Wind in the Willows had a depressing past experience. He was born in the mid Victorian Era and never really let go of the idea of childhood just like J.M. Barrie. His family although initially was a happy family, it fell apart when his mother died. Graham’s father not able to deal with his wife’s death, sent Graham and his siblings to his maternal grandmother and left them for another country. His early desertion highly impacted him and due to that his book focuses on loss of home and the restoration of it. The Rat, the Mole, and the Toad are all driven by their desire to find or rediscover their homes and not once does he mention parents in his book. The setting of the story is in a forest Graham used nature as an escape from his deserted life and also as a possibility to fill him spiritually.

If classic is marked by its ability to remain relevant for each generation – to be reinvented, as if by magic, at the same time as seeming reassuringly unchanged – then Mary Poppins must be gloriously a successful creation; or, as P.L.Travers herself put it, 'practically perfect in every way'. P. L. Travers was born in Queensland, Australia. Her father Travers Goff worked in the Australian Joint Stock Bank and later got demoted as a bank clerk. In January 1907 he feared he was about to be demoted again; he became ill with a high fever, and died several days later. His daughter Lyndon, P.L Travers was seven, the oldest of three little girls. Some time afterwards her mother, ran out of the house during a thunderstorm, crying that she was going to drown herself in a nearby river. Lyndon that night, wrapped a quilt around herself and her two younger sisters, and told them the story of a magical white horse that could fly even though it had no wings. Later in her adulthood, Travers identified it as the origin of her authorial identity; she believed the magic horse ran underground, and came up eventually as Mary Poppins. 'If you are looking for autobiographical facts,' Travers once wrote, 'Mary Poppins is the story of my life.'

And the final author, A.A. Milne, on the other hand, was an English author of Winnie the Pooh and House at the Pooh Corner. After a successful marriage with Dorothy Selincourt he had a son named Christopher Robin. Milne became very involved in nurturing him and was inspired by his son’s stuffed toys which became the main characters in his books. Milne had a child centered world, as he was the youngest and the favorite son, home comforts and affection was immense to him. Milne’s writing expresses his own happiness in life, he was successful, happily married and had a son whom he loved dearly. In Winnie the Pooh, Pooh, a bear with  very little brain in the Hundred Acre Wood, and his friend Piglet, a very small animal, after a long day return to Pooh’s house.

“What a long time whoever lives in here is not answering, and he knocked again. But Pooh, it’s your own house! said Piglet. Oh! So it is, said Pooh. Well, let’s go in.”

Now J in this scenario, Milne chooses to use Pooh’s stupidity as humor rather than a mockery of him. Other events such as Eeyore losing his tail and turns out Owl was using it as his door bell all reflect the innocent environment that Milne was in. He most likely got ideas from his son while he played with his toys and highly likely for Christopher Robin to make conversations with his toys that were not very intelligent yet humorous for adults.

Emotion is the invisible force of life. I’m sure you all have great minds…at least I think you do…We all think… we rationalize…and if we want to, we can make anything happen. But the ultimate power is descision making, what we decide after having that sensation. All of these authors were influenced by their family experiences despite being tragic or happy. Emotion was their resource and what they decided to do with that is what made their stories so appealing. There is an interaction/connection between their life and their work. Emotion let their stories feel alive and gave them a sense of belonging with the reality. Their emotion was their root. For instance, Last year, I participated in 30-300-30 essay writing challenge and was one of the few who completed. But to be honest, I was only doing it out of a strong will to succeed in the challenge.  With that in mind, I never realized what or how I was conveying my stories. Those stories had no emotion or connection and when I try and look back at it, I just can’t.

You can have great stories but make nothing out of it or write a splendid one out of a minor incident. Everyone has stories that the rest of us can learn from… Today, as you walk out of this class, I wanna challenge you to discover your story, or rediscover your wonder because …

Christopher Robin, The God Figure

At the basis of most successful stories there are one or more characters that the audience falls in love with. The fairy tale begins; the reader identifies with the character, and enjoys experiences inaccessible to him in reality. It appears that literature offers children “unique possibilities and better understanding for the self” (Ohanian 946). In Winnie the Pooh and The House at the Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne turns Christopher Robin into a Higher Being in the Hundred Acre Wood and he teaches his audience—including his son—the importance of inner strength and potential in order to solve life’s problems. Through his stories, Milne states that the aforementioned elements are means to attaining great lessons in life.

As Christopher Robin is a higher being in the Hundred Acre Wood, he plays the role of a creator of the animals in the wood. He helps Eeyore fix his tail, waits for the “passage of time and reduction of respectable proportions” (Ohanian 950) of Pooh and reads to him, assists Tigger down from a tree, helps Kanga out of the river with a pole and soon after identifies the pole as the “North Pole” (Milne Winnie the Pooh Chapter 8). In all of these events, Christopher Robin is addressed as the “hopeful one” (Milne Winnie the Pooh Chapter 2), and represents the one who “comes” to “being” and as “flesh” (Kearny 930) to rescue the animals. He is the provider for the animals when they are in need and also acts as the redeemer whenever the animals are in trouble. For instance, when Pooh is stuck in Rabbit’s “front door” (Milne Winnie the Pooh Chapter 2) Christopher Robin comes to solve the problem and as soon as he comes, everyone “felt quiet hopeful again” (Milne Winnie the Pooh Chapter 2). During the day the animals are busy humming songs or planning adventures, making visits with one another or helping each other with critical issues such as Eeyore’s accusations of someone “taking his tail,” (Milne Winnie The Pooh Chapter 4) or helping Tigger to become less “bouncy” (Milne The House at Pooh Corner Chapter 7). In such events Christopher Robin is out of the picture but as soon as the animals are in need, he is either called for or turns up at the right time and at the right place, proving that he is omnipresent. One of many attributes of a higher being is an endless love. Through the character of Christopher Robin, Milne expresses the aforementioned attribute immensely. Piglet is considered as an insignificant animal because he is a “very small animal” (Milne Winnie the Pooh Chapter 7) and Kanga makes fun of his looks telling Roo how “sorry he’ll be” (Milne Winnie the Pooh Chapter 7) if he makes faces because he will look like Piglet. In spite of all this Christopher Robin makes no judgment but loves and accepts them the way they are. Although Pooh is called a Bear with a “very little brain” (Milne Winnie the Pooh Chapter 1) his creator does not love him any less. According to Kearny in “Hermeneutics of God,” Kearny articulates that “if God exists” (Kearny 930), He does not exist for the sake of being God but “for us” (Kearny 930).

As most of the characters in the book are animals, Milne chooses to use anthropomorphism as one of the mediums to explain the relationship of animals with a superior being, just as man seeks to explain God by using human traits. Milne’s son Christopher Robin used to play with his toys and give them life-like characteristics with his mother that gradually helped Christopher Robin pour in more “characters and life into him” (Avery 131). Back in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, during the Enlightenment Era, there was a belief called Deism that regarded God as a clock maker who was “uninvolved with the world.” They regarded that God, after building the “machine” (world) and starting his creation, left it alone and in complete independence of its creator. In the same way, Christopher Robin can be considered a deist God, a clockmaker who oversees everything that is happening in the Hundred Acre Wood but leaves them for good. At the end of Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin leaves his friends, his creation, without letting them know where he was off to. Considering his act, he fits into a position of the Deist God who leaves his machine in absolute independence from its maker. However, in The House at the Pooh Corner, when Christopher is leaving the woods again, Pooh Bear makes a promise with Christopher Robin to “never forget him” (Milne The House at Pooh Corner Chapter 10), leaving the audience to believe that Christopher Robin is not a deity who is cold or distant but rather one who promises to “never forget you” and the one who “will come back” (Milne The House at Pooh Corner Chapter 10).

               From the abovementioned events of Christopher Robin as a savior to the animals in the Hundred Acre Wood, it is more apparent that he is a Christ figure in the book. Especially in chapter 9 of Winnie the Pooh, when Piglet is “entirely surrounded by water” he tries to think of a way to escape from his house and think about “what Christopher Robin would do” and it suddenly occurs to Piglet the story which “Christopher Robin had told him about a man on a desert island who had written something in a bottle and thrown it in the sea” so “Piglet thought that if he wrote something in a bottle and threw it in the water, perhaps somebody would come and rescue him.” This represents the parables that Jesus taught his disciples because it is through these parables that one can compare real life problems and try and solve them. In the tenth chapter when Pooh Bear and Christopher Robin go to the “enchanted place” and after Pooh was made a “knight,” he was thinking and dreaming of the things that Christopher Robin would “tell him when he came back from wherever he was going to.” He leaves the animals on their own, but promises them to always remember them, much like Christ leaves his disciples but promises them that he will always watch over them.

Literature offers a great opportunity to help a young reader in search for him or herself. Winnie the Pooh, written in 1926, and The House at Pooh Corner, written in1928, was originally meant for Milne’s only child Christopher Robin, one of the characters in the book and the core inspiration for Milne’s successful children’s book. He did not intend to write the books to identify his son as a Higher Being but rather wrote to teach him how to be independent and to believe in his inner strength and potential as he was heading off to Stowe Boarding School in Buckinghamshire, England. Many writings allow children to “investigate and know deep-most though, beliefs, feelings, fears, and wishes” (Ohanian 946) that exist within themselves. Thus Winnie the Pooh and The House at the Pooh Corner were books that gave a lesson for the universal audience after the book was published. For instance, when the animals and Christopher Robin went out for an “expedition” to find “the North Pole” and on their way they found a resting place for their “provisions” (Milne Winnie the Pooh Chapter 8), Eeyore, with his melancholic tone said to the rest of the animals “A little consideration, a little thought for others makes all the difference” because he did not get his own food to eat and was hinting the other animals to give him “provisions.” Milne here expresses that in the world, there are different kinds of people, the ones that are fortunate and the ones who are less fortunate; therefore it is each individual’s duty to be “considerate” of others and by being thoughtful of others one is believing in their inner potential of making a difference in someone else’s life. Kanga, a powerful mother and a caretaker, and Piglet, who is fearful and small, are a few examples that Milne has written in order to remind his audience who they should be mindful of; because sometimes these characters do not get acknowledged as much as they deserve but can turn out to be the most important people in society.

Every animal character except for Kanga with Baby Roo and later on Tigger (who lives with Kanga and Roo) lives alone in their own house and is independent and autonomous. Through their lives, Milne teaches his audience that every individual possesses “unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses” (Ohanian 950). Although Pooh is considered a bear with “very little brain” he comes up with songs, verses and poems which no one else is capable of doing. Piglet is teased because of his size but on the blusterous day when Owl’s house was “blown down” he “does a very Grand thing” (Milne The House at Pooh Corner Chapter 8) by saving Pooh bear and Owl from getting trapped in the house. Eeyore has a pessimistic view on life and is always gloomy, but he turns out to be the one who finds a house for Owl when no one else could. Through these events, Milne teaches his son and his audience to not bother about what you are bad at but focus on what you are good at. It may not necessarily come to you instantly but by believing in our inner potential and inner strength one can achieve great things without realizing it.

The tremendous understanding and patience that each character holds is a virtuous characteristic one should grasp from the Pooh books. Most of the characters embrace each other’s weaknesses and try to help one another by encouraging their friends. For instance, Piglet advises Eeyore by saying “you can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes” (Milne Winnie the Pooh Chapter 8) because Eeyore, an unenthusiastic, apathetic character, would always complain about no one going to him for visits. As a reader steps into the fantasy world and identifies himself as one of the characters and starts to feel comfortable, he begins to “forge ideas about himself” (Ohanian 946) and gets mixed up between the two worlds, reality and fantasy. However, Milne gives the animals such characteristics that when one reads and starts to walk into the shoes of these characters, one will start to behave like them, which as a result will build stronger relationships with the people around them.

Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner are books that propose the less apparent story masked under the more obvious. The story deals with the problems in relationships, every day adventures, making visits and living; it reveals the importance of believing in inner strength and inner potential. Hence, these principles help us to understand ourselves better and by being aware of ourselves we are more likely to be models for people around us. So, does inner strength, inner believes and inner potential shape the way you behave or do your surroundings help you choose the way you think of yourself?

Work Cited:

Avery, Gillian . "A. A. Milne: His Life by Ann Thwaite." The Review of English Studies 43.169

(1992): 131-133. Print.

Kearny, Richard. "Hermeneutics of the Possible God." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia Filosofia

& Cristianismo: II.Oct. - Dec., 2004 (2004): 929-952. Print.

Milne, A. A., and Ernest H. Shepard. The complete tales & poems of Winnie-the-Pooh. Rev. ed.

New York: Dutton Children's Books, 2001. Print.

Ohanian, Vera. "Cherished Books of Children:What makes them so?."Elementary English 47.7

(1947): 946-952. Print.

Payne, John . "Four Children's Books by A.A.Milne." Studies in Bibliography 23 (1970): 127-

139. Print.

I have a dream

Thousands of people have their own aspirations and so do I. “What” I still don’t know but this I know that I have a dream. A dream that would turn to reality and it will be the kind of dream I can taste and when I do, I’ll know it’s mine.

Although I don’t consider myself to be a good writer, I still have the passion and the admiration for it. So maybe, just maybe this could be the beginning of the thousands of miles I have to cross in order to "taste" my dream.

Why do I always think I have to first become famous or wealthy in order to pursue my passion? Is it right of me to think that? Can I not give it a shot and see what comes out of it?

Stream of Conciousness

Why am I afraid? Who am I scared of? I learnt the word innocuous today..it means I don’t remember.This is not a journal,im just writing whatever comes to my mind. Roomates have gone to their friends house.

Is it only me or anyone else? The more I read…the more foolish I perceive myself to be. But sometimes people are just so stupid and hence I second to Einstein’s saying human stupidity is “Infinite.” I read Marydeth’s (Mr.Garcia’s wife) journal today about “marriage.” I really like her writing. I wish I could write that well. I’m scared of something…the future…what does it have for me? What do I have for my future?What and how can I contribute to the future? Do I necessarily have to contribute? What makes me so unique and why does this world need me? These are some questions I need to figure out.

Why do relationships exist when we all know that it doesn’t last forever? Why take a chance? Why not live a single life? I’m much happier and content this way other than having to worry about another person. I feel much more independent. There is no one of this world that can have control over what I do except the Almighty, who is not of this world but of the world beyond human imagination.

That leads me to another question. What is this thing called “imagination” is it limited? Does it vary from person to person or does every individual use it differently, and do we all have the same capability?

Am I not bizaare? Who am i? Isnt life so overrated? What is my purpose?

Life in itself is nothing but a matchstick. We are nothing but a matchstick. Some shine in the dark, some are used to light cigarettes, some are used to pass on to a bonfire, or a bigger flame. Some are kept in a box, some are smaller, and or bigger. In the end, they all end. Everything ends. So why start in the first place?

Why am I studying? To become what society wants me to become? To become what I think my parents will be happy about? To become who im not? Firstly, I don’t know who I am…so no point asking that “who im not” part.

I want to buy a leather diary. I have to buy one. Why? because I want one and it looks good. J

Goodnight!