My Baby Sister Meets Pooh Bear

Ella meet Winnie the Pooh

Winnie the Pooh meet Ella

May your friendship be long and lovely.



On a Certain Loveable Bear

I have a confession. Not so very long ago, I was babysitting for some friends one evening. It was bedtime for the kids, and after they had fallen asleep and were dreaming sweet dreams in their beds I wandered downstairs and found myself at a loss for something to do. The house was picked up, the kitchen clean, children asleep; I was free to spend my quiet time however I chose! Lovely thought indeed! Do you know how I chose to spend it? I curled up on the couch with the fire crackling, a cup of tea at my elbow and a book in my hands. A book on a certain loveable bear. That’s right, Winnie the Pooh.

I love Winnie the Pooh. In the first he brings back such sweet memories of childhood. When I think of Winnie the Pooh, I think of the quilt set that used to cover my bed. The quilt set with the Hundred Acer Woods covering it and pictures of Christopher Robin holding a balloon by the big oak tree and Owl sitting atop Eeyore’s back. I think of the soft stuffed animals in a basket upstairs in our playroom. Stuffed animals I don’t remember getting it was so long ago. You see I don’t remember when I first began to love Pooh Bear, he was always there. As far back as I can remember he was always my favorite. I have a vague idea of a memory of sitting down on the carpeted floor watching the old Disney cartoon as a tot of three, but I can’t decide whether this is a memory that I have created from stories my Mom has told me, or if it is a real memory of my own. Memories are funny like that, sometimes you think you remember something but you are remembering a picture of that something.

The old Disney cartoon is wonderful, I love the sketchy animation, and the adorable songs and Pooh with his rumbly in his tumbly. I can still watch and enjoy that movie with all the love that I used to have for Winnie the Pooh but I think to properly enjoy it I have to be watching it with one of my younger siblings in my lap or by my side. Sadly I can’t enjoy it the way I used to if I’m watching it alone anymore. I have to have my baby sister in my lap and be watching her face as I hum all the old songs.

The book however, isn’t like that. I can still pick up that book all by myself and enjoy it even more than I used to even, because I can appreciate now A. A. Milne’s writing in a way I couldn’t as a child. It is the same old well-loved stories, but now I am listening to his amazing style as I read. The thing about these old classic “children’s books” is how incredibly they are written. A. A. Milne chose, like E. B. White, to write tales for children, but they wrote them in such a way they are every bit as artistically written as any adult classic. The words they chose were carefully and selectively chosen, they were writing stories that appealed to children yet in a way they could appeal to anyone.

When I read Winnie the Pooh now I am amazed at the hidden wit, the cleverness that went into his stories. I am suddenly laughing away at something that Rabbit has said quite unconsciously of course, but A. A. Milne was conscious of it. He had planned it out to have just that affect on his reader. He was carefully choosing each word to mean something in the long run. Creating it into so much more than “just” a child’s story. It is a story for all ages. That’s what makes him such an amazing author. He is not writing a child’s story because it is the “easy way out” (they will never know the difference will they?) his “child’s story” is every bit as complex and detailed as any learned one for an adult. It is just that he is choosing to write it about childhood and innocence and those playmates of imagination one had of old.

What is so inspiring I think is the idea that whatever you write, be it fiction, nonfiction, a child’s book or even a baby’s board book should be written with the same effort and care. Whether the story itself be simple or complex the same amount of effort and love should be placed into the writing of that story and the words chosen.

Just think of all the inspiring children’s books and their authors, it is worth contemplating. So much inspiration to be gained from something so outwardly simple.

Back to Winnie the Pooh.

Besides the childhood memories, and the lovely style of these books, who can help loving the illustrations? They. Are. Adorable. Each word deserves a period for emphases. The animation of the Disney cartoons are awfully sweet but ten time sweeter are the dear little illustrations by Ernest Sheppard. I had such fun looking up pictures to go with this post and I had an awfully hard time selecting just a couple of drawings to go along with. I love them all.

Go dig out your copy of Winnie the Pooh if you haven’t in a few years and revel in my little childhood friend, because I love him.

*says in a loving voice* Dear Silly Old Bear.