First things first, thank you to Netgalley and White Owl for the ARC. As always, all opinions are 100% my own.

As someone who adored Winnie the Pooh growing up and wanting to dig into the biographies and books by Milne and Shepard soon, I knew I just had to read this book. 

The book explores children books that precede A. A. Milne's work, then covers the creative and literary journeys of both Milne and Shepard. Many chapters are also dedicated to their experience through World War I and the emotional and physical toil on them.

I enjoyed the book overall, and it did introduce me to other books that I would like to read by the creators of Winnie the Pooh, but many times I felt it was very disjointed. For the first 50 or so pages of the book, the book is mostly focused about other literary works and authors that influenced A. A. Milne and at times sharing what he said about them. While I do think this was a useful exercise, I was surprised that such a long section was dedicated to those and felt it could have benefited from shorter excerpts and quotes from those books and more of the literary analysis by the the author.

The chapters are, in general, paced strangely where you will find many chapters that are a single page long that I feel could have been merged with the preceding or following chapters instead. Perhaps the sections dedicated to World War I could've been merged into two or three longer chapters to help with the flow.

Still, I found the book informative and interesting. Even as an introduction to two of the most influential literary figures even before Winnie the Pooh. I just wish it was paced differently and allowed to see more of the creators themselves versus those around them.

I would still recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn more about A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard and how Winnie the Pooh came to life!