Novelist: Pooh tales are just sickly nostalgia

NOVELIST Philip Pullman has criticised the writer of Winnie-the-Pooh for peddling ‘sickly nostalgia’ for childhood.

The His Dark Materials author said he ‘cannot stand’ A A Milne and criticised the way several of the most popular classics in children’s literature portray growing up. ‘ It always struck me as blasphemous on the part of the children’s writers of the so-called golden age, this sickly nostalgia that you see in A A Milne, E Nesbit [The Railway Children] Kenneth Grahame [Wind In The Willows], that squad,’ he said. They fail to portray adolescence as a preparation for adulthood, Pullman, 70, told the Sunday Times Magazine. ‘There was ‘a sense of “Let’s go back to the nursery. Let’s take nanny and tea and teddy bears”,’ he said. ‘Only adults feel like that. Children want to grow up.’