This is another picture book-adjacent title, rather than being an actual picture book.
Who Was A. A. Milne? (2021) by Sarah Fabiny (and illustrated by Gregory Copeland) is part of a series of historical biographies called Who HQ (from Penguin Workshop). All of them start with “Who was…” and then fill in the subject’s names. There are related series that start with “What is” and “Where is” explaining things (or documents, like the Constitution) and places.
These are short chapter books aimed at upper elementary grades. Some pages are all text, top to bottom, but most have black and white illustrations ranging from the small and simple, like a drawing of Milne’s adult mystery novel The Red House Novel. Other illustrations are much larger and more complex, like the two-page spread showing the stuffed animals that were the basis for the characters in the Winnie the Pooh books when they were on tour.
This book was not just a biography. It was intentionally and methodically educational. Often these elements are set aside, and so could be skipped (or focused on) For example, there’s a two-page aside on the famous author H.G. Wells who Milne studied with, and a two-page discussion of World War I and trench warfare. (Milne served in World War I.)
This is a good basic introduction to Milne. It focuses on Milne’s personal life–family, education, love–and his writing, but works to put this discussion in a larger context. Some darker elements get touched on, like Peter Robin reaching a point in his life when being a character in his father’s books, or the stress of war, but this is very much not an expose of Milne’s more secret side. Kids who love Pooh will enjoy this, and adults wouldn’t have to worry about tough questions (except for standard ones like “Why is there war?”).
