Beyond the World of Pooh : Selections from the Memoirs of Christopher Milne

A collection of personal memoirs chronicles the life of the original "Christopher Robin," the son of A. A. Milne, the famous creator of Winnie-the-Pooh. 10,000 first printing.

Volkman offers 12 "excursions," or lesson plans, designed to help secondary librarians steer their students through the research process. The first two lessons present basic reference books and include 70 sets of practice questions with answer keys. Excursion 3 introduces the term-paper process, with detailed instructions for a start-to-finish research project as well as sample research notes and finished papers. The remaining assignments build on this knowledge. Each lesson includes instructions, reproducibles, and a bibliography. These practical ideas will adapt easily to a specific grade, curriculum, or reference collection. The sailing metaphor wears a little thin (materials are "cargo," objectives are "destinations"), but this navigational aid will benefit any librarian struggling to stay afloat in a sea of research.
Debbie Johnson, Richardson West Junior High School, TX
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

To grow up in the shadow of a famous father is a difficult enough burden for anyone, but the late Christopher Milne also had to cope with being the real child who inspired his father's most famous work, Winnie the Pooh. As a writer himself, he has used his books of memoirs to affirm Christopher Milne as a person separate from his father and from Christopher Robin. Those four books, including two that were never published in the U.S., are combined and excerpted in this one volume, giving a fuller sense of Milne's life as a whole. This complete sweep of his life, with an introduction by his widow, allows the reader to see him as an introspective, independent child, certainly, but also as the husband, father, bookseller, and writer that he became. All in all, he was much more than the playmate of a bear. Danise Hoover