Winnie-the-Pooh (book)

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) is the first volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne. It is followed by The House at Pooh Corner. The book focuses on the adventures of a teddy bear called Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, a small toy pig; Eeyore, a toy donkey; Owl, a live owl; and Rabbit, a live rabbit. The characters of Kanga, a toy kangaroo, and her son Roo are introduced later in the book, in the chapter entitled "In Which Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest and Piglet has a Bath." The bouncy toy-tiger character of Tigger is not introduced until the sequel, The House at Pooh Corner.

Portions of the book were adapted from previously published stories. The first chapter, for instance, was adapted from "The Wrong Sort of Bees", a story published in the London Evening News in its issue for Christmas Eve 1925. The chapters in the book can be read independently of each other, as they are episodic in nature and plots do not carry over from one chapter to the next. In 2003, Winnie the Pooh was listed at number 7 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

Contents

 * 1) In Which We Are Introduced
 * 2) In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets into a Tight Place
 * 3) In Which Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a Woozle
 * 4) In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh Finds One
 * 5) In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump
 * 6) In Which Eeyore has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents
 * 7) In Which Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest and Piglet has a Bath
 * 8) In Which Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the North Pole
 * 9) In Which Piglet is Entirely Surrounded by Water
 * 10) In Which Christopher Robin Gives Pooh a Party and We Say Goodbye

Translations
The work has been translated into many languages, including Latin. The Latin translation by the Hungarian Lénárd Sándor (Alexander Lenard), Winnie ille Pu was first published in 1958, and, in 1960, became the first foreign-language book to be featured on the New York Times Best Seller List, and the only book in Latin ever to have been featured therein. It was also translated into Esperanto in 1972, by Ivy Kellerman Reed and Ralph A. Lewin, Winnie-La-Pu. The work was featured in the iBooks app for Apple's iOS as the "starter" book for the app.

Adaptations
The book Winnie-the-Pooh is the second in a series of books published in the 1920s about Winnie the Pooh and friends. These books were themselves adapted from a collection of stories penned by Milne and originally published in Punch Magazine, St. Nicholas Magazine, Vanity Fair and others, prior to publication in book form. A variety of famous illustrators were hired by the magazines to decorate Milne's text including J. H. Dowd, Reginald Birch, E. H. Shepard, A. H. Watson and others. According to a 1998 article published in the Queens Quarterly (105/4), by Ross Kilpatrick entitled "Winnie the Pooh and the Canadian Connection," the first chapter of Milne's book entitled "Winnie-the-Pooh", was adapted by Milne from "Teddy Bear's Bee Tree," by Canadian author Charles G. D. Roberts. Following Disney's licensing of certain rights to Pooh from Stephen Slesinger and the A.A. Milne Estate in the 1960s, the Milne story lines were used by Disney in its cartoon featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. The "look" of Pooh was adapted by Disney from Stephen Slesinger's distinctive American Pooh with his famous red shirt that had been created and used in commerce by Slesinger since the 1930s.

Sequels
Winnie-the-Pooh was shortly followed by The House at Pooh Corner, also by Milne.

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, by David Benedictus was the first official post-Milne Pooh book written with the full backing of A. A. Milne's estate, which took the trustees ten years to agree to. Pooh returned with his friends Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore as well as a new companion Lottie the Otter. The illustrations are by Mark Burgess, who had also worked on reviving the Paddington Bear stories.