I am embarrassed to say, I just realized at 43 what Winnie the Pooh is all about. Sure, it is about friends, adventures, silliness and honey, but reading Christopher Robin: A Boy, a Bear a Balloon I realized what it all means. The characters are the emotions and thoughts and feelings of a child. Who is not scared sometimes (Piglet) or bouncy (Tigger) or a Know-it-All (Rabbit and Owl) or gloomy and needs cheering up (Eeyore)?
And not having seen the movie yet (as it is not due out until August) something tells me that the movie is a “Hook” story where we have to remind our hero Christopher Robin (or in “Hook: Peter/Peter Pan) what it was like to be a child. And this book is the complain to that. We are meant to learn that sometimes we are all those things an adult is Responsible and we must have Important Things, but sometimes helping friends or just sitting and doing nothing with a silly ol’ bear is just what is needed.
Brittany Rubiano and Mike Wall retell some of the highlights of the movie with delightful text and amazingly beautiful illustrations. They have the hint of the old school Disney cartoon and a smidgen of the classic by A.A. Milne and Ernest H. Shepard but also follow the look of the movie (what has been seen in ads).
I would highly recommend reading Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear by Lindsay Mattick and (illustrated) Sophie Blackall as well as Winnie: The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-The-Pooh by Sally M. Walker and Jonathan D. Voss.
