Alan Alexander Milne
My name is Alan Alexander Milne. I was born in London, and from early in life I found that words could be both a game and a doorway: a way to amuse, to remember, to comfort, and sometimes to say serious things without raising one’s voice too loudly. I wrote essays, plays, poems, novels, and stories, yet the books by which many readers know me best began close to home. Childhood, with all its odd logic, solemn games, small fears, and enormous adventures, seemed to me not a lesser world than the adult one, but a truer and more surprising country. In the imagination of a child, a nursery may become a forest, a toy may become a companion, and a very small expedition may contain all the importance of a grand journey. I did not write only for children, nor only about children. I wrote about tenderness, friendship, memory, and the strange way in which ordinary things become precious when seen with affection. Humor, too, was important to me; for a joke, when honestly made, can sometimes carry more truth than a sermon. If my stories still find readers, perhaps it is because they remember something we are all in danger of forgetting: that gentleness is not weakness, that play is not foolishness, and that the small worlds we love may remain with us long after childhood has gone.