Category: Winnie The Pooh

Winnie the Pooh is a teddy bear, a great friend of Christopher Robin. A variety of stories happen to him. Once, going into the clearing, Winnie the Pooh sees a tall oak tree, at the top of which something buzzes: zhzhzhzhzhzhzh! In vain no one will buzz, and Winnie the Pooh is trying to climb a tree for honey. Having fallen into the bushes, the bear goes to Christopher Robin for help. Taking the boy’s blue balloon, Winnie the Pooh takes off, singing a «special Tuchkin song»: «I’m Tuchka, Tuchka, Tuchka, / And not a bear at all, / Ah, how nice Tuchka / To fly through the sky!»

But the bees behave ‘suspiciously,’ according to Winnie the Pooh, that is, they suspect something. One by one they fly out of the hollow and sting Winnie the Pooh. («These are the wrong bees,» the bear understands, «they probably make the wrong honey.») And Winnie the Pooh asks the boy to knock down a ball from a gun. «It will go bad,» Christopher Robin objects. «And if you don’t shoot, I’m spoiled,» says Winnie the Pooh. And the boy, realizing what to do, knocks the ball. Winnie the Pooh smoothly sank to the ground. True, after that, for a whole week the bear’s paws stuck up and he could not move them. If a fly landed on his nose, he had to blow it: «Pooh! Poohhh! »Perhaps that is why he was called Pooh.

Once Pooh went to visit the Rabbit, who lived in a hole. Winnie-the-Pooh was always not averse to ‘refreshing himself’, but when he was visiting Rabbit, he clearly allowed himself too much and therefore, crawling out, got stuck in a hole. Winnie the Pooh’s faithful friend, Christopher Robin, read books aloud to him for a whole week, and inside, in a hole. The rabbit (with permission from Pooh) used his hind legs as a towel hanger. The pooh became thinner and thinner, and now Christopher Robin said: «It’s time!» And grabbed hold of Pooh’s front paws, and Rabbit grabbed Christopher Robin, and Relatives and Friends of the Rabbit, which were terribly many, grabbed the Rabbit and began to drag it urine, And Winnie the Pooh jumped out of the hole, like a cork from a bottle, and Christopher Robin and Rabbit and all-all flew upside down!

In addition to Winnie the Pooh and the Rabbit, there is also a piglet Piglet («A Very Little Creature»), an Owl (she is literate and can even write her name – «SAVA»), always a sad donkey Eeyore. A donkey’s tail once disappeared, but Pooh managed to find it. In search of a tail, Pooh wandered to the all-knowing Owl. Owl lived in a real castle, according to the teddy bear. On the door she had a bell with a button, and a bell with a cord. An announcement hung under the bell: ‘I PLEASE TO TAKE ESLI DO NOT OPEN.’ The announcement was written by Christopher Robin, because even the Owl could not do it. Pooh tells Owl that Eeyore has lost his tail and asks for help finding him. The Owl gets into theoretical reasoning, and poor Pooh, who, as you know, has sawdust in his head, soon ceases to think about what is being discussed, and the answers of the Owl are answered «yes» or «no» in turn. To the next «no», the Owl asked in surprise: «How, haven’t you seen?» And leads Pooh to look at the bell and the advertisement under it. Pooh looks at the bell and string and suddenly realizes that he saw something very similar somewhere. Owl explains that once in the woods she saw this string and called, then she called very loudly, and the lace came off … Pooh explains to Owl that this lace is really needed Eeyore, that he loved him, you can say, was attached to him. With these words, Pooh unhooks the string and carries Eeyore, and Christopher Robin nails it in place. Pooh explains to the Owl that this string is very necessary for Eeyore, that he loved him, one might say, was attached to him. With these words, Pooh unhooks the string and carries Eeyore, and Christopher Robin nails it in place. Pooh explains to the Owl that this string is very necessary for Eeyore, that he loved him, one might say, was attached to him. With these words, Pooh unhooks the string and carries Eeyore, and Christopher Robin nails it in place.

Sometimes new animals appear in the forest, for example, Kang’s mother and Baby Roo.

At first, Rabbit decides to teach Kanga a lesson (he is indignant that she carries a child in her pocket, he tries to figure out how many pockets he would need if he also decided to carry children this way – it turns out that he is seventeen, and one more for a handkerchief! ): steal Baby Roo and hide him, and when Kanga starts looking for him, tell her «AHA!» in such a way that she understands everything. But so that Kanga does not immediately notice the loss, Piglet must jump into her pocket instead of Little Roo. And Winnie the Pooh should speak with Kenga very enthusiastically so that she turns away even for a moment, then the Rabbit will be able to escape with Little Roo. The plan succeeds, and the Kanga discovers the substitution only when it is at home. She knows that Christopher Robin will not allow anyone to offend Little Roo, and decides to play Piglet. He, however, is trying to say ‘AHA!’ but it has no effect on Kanga. She is preparing a bath for Piglet, continuing to call him ‘Ru.’ Piglet unsuccessfully tries to explain to Kenga who he really is, but she pretends that she does not understand what is the matter, and Piglet has already been washed, and a spoon of fish oil is waiting for him. The arrival of Christopher Robin saves him from medicine, Piglet rushes to him with tears, begging to confirm that he is not Little Ru. Christopher Robin confirms that this is not Ru, whom he just saw at Rabbit, but refuses to recognize Piglet, because Piglet is «of a completely different color.» Kanga and Christopher Robin decide to call him Henry Pushel. But then the new-born Henry Pushel manages to get out of Kanga’s hands and run away. He had never had to run so fast! Only a hundred steps from the house, he stops running and rolls on the ground, to regain its own familiar and cute color. So Baby Roo and Kang stay in the forest.

Another time, a Tiger appears in the forest, an unknown beast that smiles broadly and affably. Pooh treats the Tiger with honey, but it turns out that the Tigers do not like honey. Then they both go to visit Piglet, but it turns out that the Tigers do not eat acorns. The thistle that the Tigger of Eeyore treated, he also can not eat. Winnie the Pooh bursts into poetry: ‘What to do with the poor Tiger? / How can we save him? / After all, the one who does not eat anything / Can’t even grow! »

Friends decide to go to Gyeonggi, and there finally the Tiger finds food to its liking – this is fish oil, the hated medicine of Little Roo. So the Tiger settles in Kenga’s house and always gets fish oil for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And when Kanga thought that he should eat, she gave him a spoon or two of porridge. («But I personally think,» said Piglet in such cases, «that he is already strong enough.»)

Events take their course: either an «expedition» goes to the North Pole, then Piglet escapes from flooding in Christopher Robin’s umbrella, then the storm destroys the Owl’s house, and the donkey looks for her a house (which turns out to be Piglet’s house), and Piglet goes to live in Winnie- Pooh, then Christopher Robin, having already learned to read and write, leaves (it’s not entirely clear how, but it’s clear that he leaves) from the forest …

The animals say goodbye to Christopher Robin, Eeyore writes a terribly confusing poem for this occasion, and when Christopher Robin, having read it to the end, looks up, he sees only Winnie the Pooh in front of him. Together they go to the Enchanted Place. Christopher Robin tells Pooh different stories that are immediately mixed up in his head full of sawdust, and at the end he knights him. Then Christopher Robin asks the bear to make a promise that he will never forget him. Even when Christopher Robin turns one hundred years old. («How much will I be then?» Asks Pooh. «Ninety-nine,» says Christopher Robin). «I promise,» Pooh nods. And they are walking along the road.

And wherever they come and no matter what happens to them – ‘here, in the Enchanted Place on the top of a hill in the forest, a little boy will always, always play with his teddy bear.’

Wrapped in a blanket, my brothers and I used to sit by the radiator and listen to my mum read children’s classics. My favourites were Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. I remember revelling in the stories of a clueless bear, accompanied by excited and reluctant friends, wandering around Hundred Acre Wood in the perpetual pursuit of honey.

This year, on the bear of little brain’s ninetieth birthday, I decided to reread the Winnie the Pooh books. They were as I remembered: lively and playful, rich and humorous. Pooh remained clueless and the pursuit of honey paramount.

The reading, for the most part, evoked memories of the simplistic happiness of my childhood. As I reached the final pages, however, this happiness diminished. In contrast to my childhood memories, the book’s ending is not one of living happily ever after. Indeed, for Pooh and his pals, it may not be one of living at all.

In those final pages, Robin explains to a befuddled Pooh that he can’t play with him anymore because society doesn’t allow one to indulge such frolicsome endeavours. ‘I’m not going to do Nothing anymore,’ says Robin, ‘they don’t let you.’ Winnie the Pooh is the most tragic break-up story ever written. It’s the most startling case of ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. And the break-up comes from nowhere and shocks the credulous, once happy reader.

As with all great break-ups, Robin offers Pooh reassurance. He says that Pooh can still visit him on occasion and then offers one final request: ‘You promise you won’t forget me, ever.’ A baffled Pooh agrees.

This notion of reconciliation is a childish fantasy that no adult in possession of critical faculties can accept. The idea that Pooh and Robin will continue on their adventures is a naked fallacy. We are all aware, as my rereading of this book exemplifies, that we have to grow up – indeed, society demands it – and Robin’s childish imaginings – the backbone of this relationship – are lost in the process.

This break-up is all the more disturbing because, without such imaginings, Pooh is essentially lifeless. Robin’s imagination is Pooh’s life source – his élan vital. Robin, through his acceptance of social norms and his dissipating imagination, is responsible for Winnie the Pooh’s demise. And with the demise of Pooh comes the death of all those folks of Hundred Acre Wood: Piglet, Tigger, Owl, Rabbit and so on.

Before placing Pooh in the dustbin of history, however, Robin cravenly beseeches him to understand. Pooh responds in his unnerving and beautiful credulity: ‘Understand what?’ ‘Oh, nothing’ Robin says, deciding that ignorance is preferable to the truth. This is Robin’s final act of kindness in a cruel, cruel world.

The Winnie the Pooh story ends, like the world, not with a bang but with a whimper. This isn’t to suggest the conclusion is tepid – far from it – but it ends with a literal whimper from the discerning reader. Revisiting Winnie the Pooh made me realise not only that adulthood is a baleful hellscape, but also that my childhood memories were a fantasy.

We will celebrate Pooh’s ninetieth birthday this year. Some may opt for cognitive dissonance and persuade themselves that Winnie the Pooh is just a series of lovely books based on a harmless bear of little brain. They may choose to overlook the implicit horror: the demise of friends, the end of friendship and the passing of happy childhood memories.

I, on the other hand, will mourn. I will mourn Winnie the Pooh and his band of excited and reluctant brothers and all they came to represent. I will mourn Robin’s transition from innocent child with a wealth of imagination into a man who turned his back on his friends. I will also mourn those lovely memories of childhood that, because of Robin’s cowardice and my own transition into adulthood, are now lost forever.

Pooh Bear, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo are all lovable characters most of us know well from our childhoods. What many people don’t know is that the adorable books are based on author A. A. Milne’s real son Christopher Robin and his stuffed animals. While the trailer of the new film Goodbye Christopher Robin teases a warm and cuddly film, it actually tells the true story of a little boy who felt betrayed by those who should have loved him the most: his parents.

Playwright A. A. Milne returned from World War I “shell shocked.” Today, we call the psychological condition post-traumatic stress disorder, but that term didn’t exist at the beginning of the last century. His wife Daphne is a beautiful but shallow socialite who loves fashion, parties and dancing. Though reluctant, she agrees to have a baby to please her husband.

The couple names their son Christopher Robin, but they prefer to call him Billy. Daphne doesn’t seem to enjoy motherhood and eagerly hands the boy over to his governess, Olive, who luckily adores the child.

After the Milnes move to the country for a quieter life, Daphne, missing her glamorous social life, gets fed up and takes off to London for two weeks. At the same time, Olive has to leave to attend to her dying mother. Little Billy is left alone with his emotionally distant dad.

The result is surprisingly wonderful — for both father and son. They spend their days playing in the woods. Billy brings his stuffed animals and he and his dad make up stories about their adventures.

Milne is so inspired after spending time with his son, he writes the Pooh books based on his son and his stuffed animals. While it sounds like a decision made out of love, it didn’t exactly end up feeling that way to Billy.

Once the book was published, it became a huge success. As it flew off store shelves around the world, an unexpected dynamic took place.

Readers everywhere wanted to meet the real Christopher Robin, the boy at the center of this seemingly magical world. Thrust into the spotlight by his parents and publishers, Billy was paraded around for the media, not understanding why everyone kept calling him Christopher.

But all the little boy wanted to do was play a game of Poohsticks in the woods with his father.

With the media attention all around the world focused on his son, Milne grew jealous. He was the writer, after all, and he began to resent his son. When he started avoiding Billy, the young child became confused and hurt. The two weeks of bliss he spent playing and bonding with his father now seemed like just dream. His life became about spending long days meeting unfamiliar children and adults surrounded by cameras, forced to wear the outfit depicted in the book.

Olive finally stood up to his parents, saying the boy needed to be protected, not treated like a show pony. But his parents didn’t appreciate her uppity attitude, and a rift is formed. When Olive’s boyfriend asked her to marry him, she had no choice but to leave the family. Billy was heartbroken.

Milne wrote four Winnie the Pooh books, but agreed to stop writing them at the request of Billy, who was constantly throughout his schooling. The other boys didn’t appreciate the media darling and wanted to put him in his place. Billy was forced to learn how to box to protect himself.

What’s so surprising about this story is that the Winnie the Pooh books still continue to bring joy to children almost 100 years after they were written. Surely, it seems, only a kind and loving soul could have written them. But looking through a modern parenting lens, the Milnes were rotten parents. At the time, however, it was normal for wealthy British children to be kept at arm’s length. It seems the success of the books created a situation neither parent expected or knew how to handle. Could they have done better? Yes. Were they self-absorbed? Yes. But it seems unlikely they set out to purposefully hurt their son.

In 1974, Billy published the first of three autobiographical books. The Enchanted Places details what his life was like as a child. He never took any money associated with the Pooh franchise and eventually gave his treasured stuffed animals to the books’ editor. They are now on display at the New York Public Library.

Goodbye Christopher Robin is an unflinching look at a dysfunctional family that will have you in tears. Newcomer Will Tilston as Billy will steal your heart and make you want to pull out those Pooh books to read again to your kids.

Characters as friends and guardians

This section aims to discuss the use of characters introduced to children through book illustrations and how these can become much more than just a scribble on a page. An illustrated character has the capability to become a friend to a child just as much as any other human, as young children have an imaginative capacity that makes them able to imagine a character in any situation or scenario.

A study by Taylor (2001) suggested that exposing children to illustrated characters in children’s books can lead them to create their own imaginary friends, whether that be an exact replica of the character or their own adapted interpretation. This idea of imaginary friends through character is linked closely to A.A Milne’s Winnie the Pooh (1926), the teddy bear friend of Christopher Robin that comes to life in his imagination. Pooh becomes not only just a friend to Christopher Robin, but someone who offers guidance to him throughout his childhood and helps him solve both physical and mental dilemmas.

In the past a child with an imaginary friend may have been considered peculiar, shy, or even troubled, but according to Taylor the reality is much more positive. Not only are imaginary companions surprisingly common, but the children who have them also tend to be less introverted and more outgoing than other children. They also are better able to focus their attention and to see things from another person’s perspective, which then develops their understanding of empathy and shared emotion. This all stems from characters in children’s books acting as both a friend and a source of guidance to children, which they can then develop imaginatively outside of the constraints of a story book and can begin to create their own stories and narratives involving the character, developing their personality as they go.

According to Taylor, children who create imaginary friends from characters are socially interactive, therefore inventing companions to fill the space that they are alone and devoid of other human interaction, particularly with their peers. In the Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss (1957), the story begins with two bored children unable to go outside because it is too cold and wet, their day being saved by a large black cat that entertains them with a series of peculiarities. For many children, a companion similar to the Cat in the Hat would be ideal to keeping them entertained on a rainy day, and so children invent companions when no one else is around and they want something interesting to do.

These characters and their companionship can be so much more than mere partners in play. They can bear the brunt of a child’s anger, be the sole blame for things the child has committed, become a tool for bargaining with their parents e.g. “Pooh doesn’t clean his room so why should I?” or a source of communication beyond the information the child is willing to give e.g. communicating fears or dislikes by using the character as a referencing point. These companions can also be helpful in becoming a coping mechanism for children’s psychological needs beyond the desire to escape blame or black mailing their parents, using fantasy to help them cope with their problems and offering a sense of escapism from the real world. Imaginary character companions listen to a child’s problems without the fear of repeating them to others, and so although they are used by a wide variety of children, they are often associated with children of trauma or abuse (Taylor, 2001) which only reiterates the premise that characters becoming friends encourage children to cope with life.

Characters can also guide children through profound stages of loneliness, for example Francis Ford Coppola, the creator of The Godfather has stated that the companionship of a character helped him survive a year spent alone in his room as an eight year old boy suffering from polio disease. He has recounted spending his days passing the time acting out scenarios with his character, which then influenced his future career choice. According to Dr Humberto Nagera, a professor of psychiatry, feelings of loneliness, rejection and neglect frequently motivate the creation of imaginary companions (2018). Nagera’s case study showed that a child is likely to adopt a character as a friend shortly after the birth of a new sibling, as they discover they receive less attention from their parents and their new sibling is too young to be a play mate.

Harter and Chao (1992) conducted a study of children and their imaginative companions and came to the conclusion that there is a key difference in the role of these companions based on the gender of the creator. Boys generally tend to create a companion that holds qualities which they would like to see in themselves, whereas girls often play the role of the more competent individual in the relationship between the character and themselves, nurturing and helping their imaginary friend in the same way they expect to be nurtured and helped by their character. Of course, these gender differences are very general and not applicable to every child’s case, but it is interesting to note the differences between children’s encounters with characters.

Harter and Chao’s research can be interpreted to show the gender tendencies revolving around the kinds of characters children adopt as friends and how these then go on to affect their childhood. Each child is different and therefore the variety of characters created is completely limitless, which means each character is valuable to the child for different reasons.

An example of characters being created for different purposes would be Winnie the Pooh (1926), as Pooh was created in the hope of providing a gentler response to the horrors of the previous decade and helping the people of Britain overcome the First World War. “Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends enchanted and charmed the world with their innocence, but they were actually born in a harrowing time for the country and written by a man who had been traumatised by World War I.” (Salter, 2017) This suggests that characters are often created to be companions to children as an escape from struggle and guide them through the toughest parts of their lives. Pooh taught the generation of children who had to grow up too quickly that it was finally safe to go outside into the woods and play again. Even the pastoral paradise of Hundred Acre Wood contrasts greatly to the destruction of Britain after the war, and he wished to create his good natured characters in a similar manner. As a sufferer of post-war PTSD, Milne wished to create a character that would become a guardian to young children and support them in their recovery from their own mental battles.

There has been a myriad of speculation surrounding the topic of the purpose of Pooh and his supportive characters, and what they represent. Sarah Shea produced a report (2000) which evoked the premise that each character represents a significant mental disorder, the most obvious being Tigger’s ADHD and Eeyore’s depression. This diagnosis could mean that a child would be more likely to relate to a character if they suffer from any of the symptoms themselves, therefore making the mentioned character a much stronger source of guidance and guardianship. Furthermore, the absence of Christopher Robin’s parents reiterates the previous suggestion that children create these characters when they are at their loneliest and they become a substitute for a friend or peer. As cultural theorist Stefan Herbrechter said: “Children are supposed to live in a world of their own, which is clearly defined and marked out as the space and time for play,” so characters are a vital element for a child’s play.

Although Herbrechter discusses the concept of toys rather than illustrated characters, his idea that toys are “like little story machines, narrative catalysers, objects that help make sense of the world,” can be relevant to Milne’s Pooh and friends as the rendering in Shepherd’s illustrations emphasises the ‘toy-ness’ of the characters, offering the pleasure of play to children, showing that these characters can be much more than literal beings and can become limitless using a child’s adventurous imagination.

This links closely to the idea of characters as influences on young children and how they have the capability to affect how a child acts, especially towards other children. A study from a 2017 parenting group in USA shows how young children, particularly toddlers, are affected by positive cartoon influences. One of the main characters they studied was Winnie the Pooh, concluding that Milne’s adaption of the character teaches children acceptance towards people and situations, helping them transform into young adults. Winnie the Pooh teaches the young reader that there are multiple ways to interpret and interact with the world, and that there may be a difference between what people say and what they mean, which is a dilemma Pooh often comes across in these tales. Mostly, it is the comforting presence of Pooh that entices children into loving him as if he were one of their own friends.