The Enchanted Places [Hardcover]

In Poland everybody my generation (I am middle aged) loves Winnie the Pooh and his friends. In my childhood I re-read the books many times. They create an idyllic image of Christopher's perfect childhood. As a child I often whished mine was similar. Then many years later I read The Enchanted Places in translation. This book had a huge impact on me. I realized that Winnie the Pooh is all about appearances and not a really happy childhood.

Chrisopher Milne reveals the truth behind an appearantely idyllic life. One might have thought that Christopher Milne, of all the children in the world, son of a wonderful author of children's literature, must have had a perfect childhood. Christopher's revelations are an eye opener. They tells us about events in Chris' childhood and how his toys served merely as inspiration for the father. In fact they seem to have been selected not because Chris liked them but because they inspired the father's genius. Chris expresses no nostalgia for the days gone by. In fact he seems to be relieved that he is no longer his father's son but a man in his own right. Sometimes it feels as if the great father was a 'parasite' on his son's life, at least with respect to the father's literary career.

This book reveals the painul truth of what it may be like to be a child of a famous parent and what it is like to be confronted with the strange world of adults and their problems. A.A Milne's books show adult perception of childhood and young years, Christopher's book shows the painful reality and naked truth.

I learned a lot from this book, on two levels. First of all as a mother of two daughters I realized that what seems to us idyllic and happy childhood might not necessarily be happy for the child itself. Therefore we, adults, must learn to look at our children's childhood not through our adult eyes but try to see it the way the child does. How often we parents choose the wallpapaer, the toys, friends because we like them, often not asking the children's opinion. This is the Milne syndrome. What is more small children themsleves are not good, well wishing and sweet creatures as adults would like to see them. In fact they have a number of negative features. In fact this is very well expressed when Christopher talks about his father's poems showing that the children's world presented in his father's poems is in fact brutal, cynical, sometimes even ruthless. There is also a second bottom to the book. I am a senior lecturer at University of Gdansk and I run classes on English Language Children's Literature. This autobiography is an excellent supplement to the course. When with my students, we analyse Winnie the Pooh we also talk about Christopher's autobiography. These books put together or rather juxtaposed create the real image of the Milne phenomenon. I believe that everybody who has read Winnie the Pooh as a child should read The Enchanted Places as an adult. Only then we have grown up properly.