Now We Are Six

Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne is a collection of children's poems for 5 year olds, and it is very much a book to be read out loud.

What happens

Milne knows it too. He opens by explaining that when you recite a poem, Uncle John is usually still hunting for his spectacles and everyone is helping him look.

So you learn to say "Er-h'r'm!" very loudly first. Then everybody stops talking and looks at you, which is what you wanted. He calls the introduction the er-h'r'm of the whole book.

He also mentions that they took nearly three years over it. They started when they were very young and now they're six. Some of the earlier bits strike him as babyish now. One is simply three-ish, he says, so they turned the page rather quickly.

There's a P.S. from Pooh, who would like you to know that he walked through this book one day looking for Piglet and sat down on some of the pages by mistake.

Then thirty-five poems.

Sneezles is the one your reader will ask for twice in a row. Christopher Robin gets wheezles and sneezles, and famous physicians come hurrying round at a run to argue about whether the sneezles came after the wheezles, or the first sneezle came first.

It barely means anything. That's rather the point. It is enormously satisfying to say and a five year old will love you for doing the doctor voices.

Binker is the one that will get you instead. Binker is the friend nobody else can see. Daddy is clever but hasn't time to play. Mummy is the best since the world began but sometimes goes away. Nanny wants to brush your hair.

But Binker's always Binker, and is certain to be there. Read that one at bedtime and see how you get on.

Then there's King John, who nobody likes, who hangs up a hopeful stocking anyway and asks Father Christmas for a big red india-rubber ball.

A note on the age of it. These poems are a hundred years old, so there's a nursery and a Nanny in them and a few words your reader will want explaining. That's honestly no bother. A child doesn't need to know what a charcoal-burner is to enjoy the sound of the line.

It's also a lovely one for a child who isn't reading fluently by themselves yet. You do the reading. They do the joining in, which by about the third go they will be doing whether invited or not.

What to read next

If it's them who want to do the performing, there's Poems Aloud. Joseph Coelho hands them twenty poems and the trick for each one, including tongue twisters, poems to whisper in somebody's ear and poems to project at a whole class.