By 
Most of us, if you say ‘bear’ and ‘AA Milne’, we will come up with Winnie the Pooh, aka Edward Bear, who seems to be fond of honey and is sitting in the middle of the stairs, along with Christopher Robin . But one poem in particular Lines and squares It doesn’t appear to be teddy bears, it is about real grizzly bears, which seem to roam the street.
But how can you evoke these bears? Simple, just stand in the cracks in the pavement. (Ok, in America they are known as sidewalks, but this is English superstition, okay?) They are called ‘fools’ who stand on corners, and understandably, after all, no one wants to be eaten by Bears.
The bears appear to act innocently, as if they are not about to devour the children. But of course they are …
This poem seems to pre-empt the cruelty of the Roald Dahl stories where adults are eaten, but of course there was the famous poem recited by Stanley Holloway about a lion that ate a boy named Albert. Earlier, the Queen of Hearts ordered people’s heads to be cut off in Alice in Wonderland
The actual game goes back a long way, it seems to go back to an ancient belief of not breaking the square, which possibly represented the Earth (which was also believed to have four corners). There is a rhyme that says:
Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Step on a line, break your mother’s spine.
Recently, the British cartoon show, Charlie and lola presented this game.