Developmental Psychologists and The House at Pooh Corner Anonymous 12th Grade

A.A. Milne’s 1928 classic children’s book The House at Pooh Corner remains a highly effective children’s text nearly ninety years on. This can be accredited to the format, themes and developmental concepts portrayed in the book. The concepts in the book align with those of Piaget, Vygotsky and Erikson, three influential developmental psychologists. Animism, concept formation, ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) and the confidence in ability to learn are all central parts of the child’s development, and the book. These factors are why the stories still engage young audiences today.

The main characters of the book illustrate Piaget’s theory of Animism which coincides which the child’s belief of the concept. Animism is the theory of believing that every entity has a consciousness. For example, to a child, a teddy bear is the same as them, with emotions and feelings. The book perfectly illustrates this, as all characters bar one (Christopher Robin) are portrayed as talking animals. The character’s are not individually introduced or explained but rather the reader must get a sense of the character from his/her actions, speech and pictorial depictions. Very early in the book, Pooh’s...