The World of Pooh

Years ago I bought a nice little book entitled 'Piglet Meets a Heffalump'. Perhaps that was the first time I learnt that the original illustrations of Winnie the Pooh were different from Disney's. Compared to Disney's, the original illustrations by E.H. Shepard are like raw sketches, yet they are so cute.

This World of Pooh book contains chapters from 'Winnie-the-Pooh' and 'The House at Pooh Corner', with 8 colour illustrations (apart from the b/w drawings). In reading, the characters are more likeable, because Piglet doesn't stammer so much, Tigger is not so annoying, Rabbit not so patronizing; although Eeyore is still gloomy.

It's interesting because now I realize how Christopher Robin first only had Winnie-the-Pooh and gradually adds more friends to his collection. One thing I like about this work of A.A. Milne, is that, the characters have difficulty in spelling. In my opinion, those who are learning to read and write should not read this book alone, and a parent should accompany. You don't want your kid to spell 'honey' as 'hunny', don't you? -and it did take me a long time to figure out that 'heffalump' meant 'elephant' - and perhaps I'd never found out if E.H. Shepard didn't provide the clue. However, we all can learn about altruistic from Winnie-the-Pooh, a Bear of Very Little Brain (so they say), but proves that he can solve delicate problems, better than those who are smarter (so they say) than him.