The Art of Book Design: Winnie The Pooh


A.A. Milne. Winnie The Pooh. Illustrations by Ernest A. Shepherd. New York, E.P. Dutton, 1961.

A.A. Milne. Winnie The Pooh. Illustrations by Ernest A. Shepherd. New York, E.P. Dutton, 1961.

A.A. Milne. Winnie The Pooh. Illustrations by Ernest A. Shepherd. New York, E.P. Dutton, 1961.

It isn’t exactly a fairy tale, but I’m feeling nostalgic and this is one of my favourite books from childhood. My mother read to me every night until long after I could read for myself and this was the book that I most often asked for. I loved the gentle ways of Pooh and his friends and my mom had different voices for each of the characters that brought the book to life. The edition above is from 1961 and it’s the one that we had in our little library. I wish I could say that I still had it, but when my parents divorced it went missing along with a lot of other books that were likely passed down to another child in our neighbourhood.

 

via: Worthpoint

Comments

  1. says

    I absolutely love Winnie the Pooh. I have a small collection of beanie plushies modelled after those illustrations.
    My favourite one is Eeyore

  2. says

    I have never actually read this book completely I tried, but I was possibly too old at that time because I did not enjoy it at all.

  3. says

    I’m feeling nostalgic and this is one of my favourite books from childhood.

    And here I am, absolutely hating the book. I rarely hate a book, usually I just don’t care about all those books I didn’t particularly like. The number of books I truly hate is very small, and this one is at the very top. It’s literally the book I hate the most of all the books out there.

    At school I was forced to read this book again and again and again. Year after year after year. According to literature teachers, this was the one book we had to read all the time as children. The first time I read this book I was maybe six or seven. I didn’t particularly like this book then, but I didn’t dislike it that much either. It was just one of those books I didn’t care about. But being forced to read this book again and again when I was 8, and 9, and 10, and 11 made me hate it so deeply. Winnie the Pooh was an idiot. He was just too dumb for me to like the character or be able to relate to him. For example, I cringed as I was reading that chapter where Pooh went on an expedition to find the North Pole. By then I was already old enough to know what the North Pole was or where it was located. Reading about Pooh’s unbearable stupidity was just torturous for me. Or all those chapters where the characters tried to learn how to read. You just learn how to read. It’s not that hard. Yet these characters in this book struggled to memorize even a few letters. They were all just so unbearably stupid. I hated every one of them.

  4. efogoto says

    We had the four volume set, two poetry, two Winnie-the-Pooh. My dad couldn’t stand Pooh, so he read us the poetry. I still love them.

  5. voyager says

    Andreas,
    I might hate the book too if I was forced to read it until I was 11. By then, I was reading chapter books.
    I always found Pooh to be wise. He had good priorities (friends, food, fun), he was curious and not afraid to say he didn’t know something and nothing ever rattled him. He liked a quiet life and that’s what I wanted most as a kid because my parents were both full of drama and it was awful.

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