Thursday, July 20, 2006

The 306 Greatest Books #51 - Winnie-the-Pooh

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne. This book can be found on the BBC and My Book Lists.


Winnie-the-Pooh is one of those stories that had pervaded my childhood. From the movies to the cartoon series, I was (and still am) absolutely in love with Pooh Bear, despite never having read the books. And I am sure that the reason this is on the BBC 100 Greatest Books (which is basically a popularity vote on books) is because of the cultural inundation of Pooh. That being said, I still really enjoyed the book. It brought back many good memories from all the movies and shows which took their plots many times directly from the books. The book is set up with each chapter containing a different adventure with Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Woods. This is how so many books can be created from the one original book. Each chapter is often broken out and made into a unique book, or cartoon, or movie. Within the stories, A.A. Milne talks to the reader in such a unique way that the language he uses could be considered as poor in other instance but in this instance it feels endearing. I found the best stories to be some of his earlier works in the book, which also ended up being some of the shorter chapters. As the chapters/stories got longer, A.A. Milne's particular use of language didn't seem to work as well. However, overall I would definitely recommend this book, especially for the kid in all of us.

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