Children's Book Week:Winnie-the-Pooh (book)

Winnie-the-Pooh (book)

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) is the first volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, written by A. A. Milne and illustrated by E. H. Shepard. The book focuses on the adventures of a teddy bear called Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, a small toy pig; Eeyore, a toy donkey; Owl, a live owl; and Rabbit, a live rabbit. The characters of Kanga, a toy kangaroo, and her son Roo are introduced later in the book, in the chapter entitled "In Which Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest and Piglet has a Bath". The bouncy toy-tiger character of Tigger is not introduced until the sequel, The House at Pooh Corner.

In 2003, Winnie the Pooh was listed at number 7 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.^[1]

Contents

1. In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie the Pooh and Some Bees and the Stories Begin

Winnie-the-Pooh is out of honey, so he and Christopher Robin attempt to trick some bees out of theirs, with disastrous results.

2. In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets into a Tight Place

Pooh visits Rabbit, but eats so much while in Rabbit's house that he gets stuck in Rabbit's door on the way out.

3. In Which Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a Woozle

Pooh and Piglet track increasing numbers of footsteps round and round a spinney of trees.

4. In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh Finds One

Pooh sets out to find Eeyore's missing tail, and notices something interesting about Owl's bell-pull.

5. In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump

Piglet and Pooh try to trap a Heffalump, but wind up trapping the wrong sort of creature.

6. In Which Eeyore has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents

Pooh feels bad that no one has gotten Eeyore anything for his birthday, so he and Piglet try their best to get him presents.

7. In Which Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest and Piglet has a Bath

Rabbit convinces Pooh and Piglet to try to kidnap newcomer Baby Roo to convince newcomer Kanga to leave the forest.

8. In Which Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the North Pole

Christopher Robin and all of the animals in the forest go on a quest to find the North Pole in the Hundred Acre Wood.

9. In Which Piglet is Entirely Surrounded by Water

Piglet is trapped in his home by a flood, so he sends a message out in a bottle in hope of rescue.

10. In Which Christopher Robin Gives Pooh a Party and We Say Goodbye

Christopher Robin gives Pooh a party for helping to rescue Piglet during the flood.

Translations

The work has been translated into many languages, including Latin. The Latin translation by the Hungarian Lénárd Sándor (Alexander Lenard), Winnie ille Pu, was first published in 1958, and, in 1960, became the first foreign-language book to be featured on the New York Times Best Seller List, and the only book in Latin ever to have been featured therein.^[2] It was also translated into Esperanto in 1972, by Ivy Kellerman Reed and Ralph A. Lewin, Winnie-La-Pu.^[3] The work was featured in the iBooks app for Apple's iOS as the "starter" book for the app.

Adaptations

Following Disney's licensing of certain rights to Pooh from Stephen Slesinger and the A. A. Milne Estate in the 1960s, the Milne story lines were used by Disney in its cartoon featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.^[4] The "look" of Pooh was adapted by Disney from Stephen Slesinger's distinctive American Pooh with his famous red shirt that had been created and used in commerce by Slesinger since the 1930s.^[5]

Sequels

Winnie-the-Pooh was shortly followed by The House at Pooh Corner, also by Milne.

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, by David Benedictus was the first official post-Milne Pooh book written with the full backing of A. A. Milne's estate, which took the trustees ten years to agree to.^[6] Pooh returned with his friends Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore as well as a new companion Lottie the Otter. The illustrations are by Mark Burgess, who had also worked on reviving the Paddington Bear stories.

The Best Bear in All The World, by Paul Bright, Jeanne Willis, Kate Saunders and Brian Sibley is the second official post-Milne Pooh book, published by Egmont on 6 October 2016.^[7] The four different authors have written four short stories around the four seasons of Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, and the book is again illustrated by Mark Burgess.

Rights sold to Disney

In 2001, Disney bought all rights to the character from The Royal Literary Fund, whom the estate of Milne had sold the rights to. The $350M purchase gave Disney full rights to the franchise until copyright expires in 2026.^[8]

References

·  "The Big Read", BBC, April 2003. Retrieved 21 December 2013

·  ·  McDowell, Edwin (18 November 1984). "'WINNIE ILLE PU' NEARLY XXV YEARS LATER". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 October 2018.

·  ·  (Milne), Reed and Lewin, trs., Winnie-La-Pooh, foreword by Humphrey Tonkin (Dutton), 1972, 2nd edition UEA, Rotterdam, 1992.

·  ·  Thompson, Howard (7 April 1966). "A Disney Package: Don't Miss the Short". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 October 2018.

·  ·  Sauer, Patrick (6 November 2017). "How Winnie-the-Pooh Became a Household Name". Smithsonian. Retrieved 11 October 2019.

·  ·  "First new Winnie-the-Pooh book in 80 years goes on sale". The Daily Telegraph. 5 October 2009. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 11 October 2019.

·  ·  Egmont press release Archived 17 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine

·  "MediaTalk; Disney Buys the Rights to Winnie the Pooh". The New York Times. Reuters. 5 March 2001. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 11 October 2019.