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sarahswarbrick's review
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
4.0
Light hearted reflections of a childhood in London. An added delight is all the little sketches that slip in between paragraphs.
peterp3's review against another edition
4.0
Delightful account remembering the happy days of EH Shepard’s childhood, essentially chronicling the events in his life in 1887, when he was 8 years old. It’s an evocative description of life from the perspective of a child in a fairly well-to-do family in North London. The line drawings bring the whole thing to life very well, and I particularly liked the fact that he’s included a few drawings that he made at the time, which his father had preserved. You can see his artist’s talent, even at the age of 8!
thenovelbook's review against another edition
3.0
So, I have to admit I didn't really read much of the text except here and there. The attraction is in the drawings, since this man also did the illustrations for Winnie the Pooh. He describes his childhood in the Victorian era and the accompanying drawings are pretty cute. Available from openlibrary.org if you have an app that's Adobe DRM enabled (try Freading or Mantano), but be sure to get the PDF version to see the pictures.
flozzette's review
2.0
The drawings are interesting, seeing how he decides to artistically portray how he remembers his childhood, but Shepard is no writer. The whole memoir is mostly descriptions for description's sake, making mostly unnoteworthy observations, and I don't feel like I'm any closer to the boy or the people around him or the situations he describes. It lacks poetry, depth, insight, characters, development, self-reflection. That is not to say it wasn't touching at times, but overall a boring read.
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