A Gallery of Children

Before Winnie-the-Pooh, there was this: a tender collection of short stories that A.A. Milne crafted to accompany a series of delicate illustrations that had already captured the public's heart. Commissioned by the Colgate company in 1925 for magazine advertising, Dutch artist Henriette Willebeek Le Mair's portraits of children were so enchanting that Milne wrote these fanciful tales as elaborations, each one a small window into a child's vivid world. The stories brim with the kind of imaginative play and gentle adventure that define early childhood, rendered with Milne's signature warmth and wit. The illustrations, soft and evocative, complement these vignettes perfectly. For readers who have loved Milne's later work, this collection offers a glimpse of the literary voice that would eventually give us Pooh, but in a purer, more nostalgic key. It's a charmed artifact of 1920s childhood, gentle and wholly endearing.