Public-domain ebook

Now we are six

Name: Now we are six
Author: A. A. Milne

by A. A. Milne

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Language: en3,348 downloads on Project Gutenberg

Subjects

Children's poetry, English

In: Children & Young Adult Reading·Poetry·British Literature

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #70516.

About this book

Now we are Six is a whimsical collection of children’s poems by A. A. Milne, presented as a single volume that opens with a self‑referential “Introduction” in which the narrator explains how three years of writing have produced a book that feels both youthful and slightly unfinished. The opening passage humorously describes the chaos of a poetry recital gone awry, the ritual “_er‑h’r’m_” that commands attention, and the author’s own struggle to decide whether to continue or stop at the sixth draft. From there the contents list reveals a parade of titles, “Solitude,” “King John’s Christmas,” “Busy Sneezles,” “The Knight Whose Armour Didn’t Squeak,” and many more, each promising a brief, imaginative vignette that ranges from the absurd to the gently reflective.

Milne’s voice is unmistakably playful, blending the conversational tone of a child’s imagination with the rhythmic cadence of early‑20th‑century verse. The style shifts from tongue‑in‑cheek rhymes to short narrative poems, often employing repetition and whimsical wordplay that echo the oral storytelling tradition of his era. Readers who delight in the same sort of fanciful language that once charmed the Hundred Acre Wood will find this book appealing, particularly younger listeners, parents reading aloud, and anyone who enjoys a light‑hearted, slightly off‑beat poetic adventure.

Who appears in Now we are six

Uncle JohnMiddle‑aged gentleman in tweed jacket, round spectacles, mustache, standing in a modest parlor
Aunt RoseElegant woman in early‑1900s tea‑dress, hair in a soft bun, holding a lace handkerchief

The opening · free to read

When you are reciting poetry, which is a thing we never do, you find sometimes, just as you are beginning, that Uncle John is still telling Aunt Rose that if he can't find his spectacles he won't be able to hear properly, and does she know where they are; and by the time everybody has stopped looking for them, you are at the last verse, and in another minute they will be saying, "Thank-you, thank-you," without really knowing what it was all about. So, next time, you are more careful; and, just before you begin you say, "_Er-h'r'm!_" very loudly, which means, "Now then, here we are"; and everybody stops talking and looks at you: which is what you want. So then you get in the way of saying it whenever you are asked to recite ... and sometimes it is just as well, and sometimes it isn't.... And by and by you find yourself saying it without thinking. Well, this bit which I am writing now, called Introduction, is really the er-h'r'm of the book, and I have put it in, partly so as not to take you by surprise, and partly because I can't do without it now. There are some very clever writers who say that it is quite easy not to have an er-h'r'm, but I don't agree with them. I think it is much easier not to have all the rest of the book.

What I want to explain in the Introduction is this. We have been nearly three years writing this book. We began it when we were very young ... and now we are six. So, of course, bits of it seem rather baby-ish to us, almost as if they had slipped out of some other book by mistake. On page whatever-it-is there is a thing which is simply three-ish, and when we read it to ourselves just now we said, "Well, well, well," and turned over rather quickly. So we want you to know that the name of the book doesn't mean that this is us being six all the time, but that it is about as far as we've got at present, and we half think of stopping there.

A. A. M.

P.S.--Pooh wants us to say that he thought it was a different book; and he hopes you won't mind, but he walked through it one day, looking for his friend Piglet, and sat down on some of the pages by mistake.

The book keeps going