Product Description

Over eighty years since Winnie-the-Pooh first delighted children of all ages, David Benedictus takes us back to the Hundred Acre Wood for more adventures. From the excitement of Christopher Robin's return to the curious business of learning to play cricket, "Return to the Hundred Acre Wood" allows Winnie-the-Pooh fans to spend a few more treasured hours with the Best Bear in All the World. Bernard Cribbins reads this much-anticipated official sequel to "Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #807 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780525421603
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Customer Reviews

The Magic is Gone
One would think that an official Winnie-the-Pooh sequel, approved by the A.A. Milne estate, would be a respectful and authentic, if light, sequel to the original Winnie-the-Pooh books.
They would be wrong.
The first chapter is strong, with Christopher Robin returning to the Hundred Acre Wood in the summer break between sessions of boarding school. But Christopher Robin is not the same, and therein lies a major problem of the book. The charm of the earlier Pooh books was that they were so innocent, each chapter an escapist outing into a world that had no ties to the real one. But many of the stories in the book (including a Spelling Bee that is ultimately cancelled and an attempt to start a school)feel like overly mature invasions from outside of the Hundred Acre Wood that ruin the integrity of the book.
Speaking of an invader, a new chararcter, Lottie the Otter, is introduced. She is fine as a character (if overly predictable- haughty but forgetful), but she is not a really well-planned addition to the story, and the end result comes across as what she is- an addition to the Hundred Acre Wood by someone who certainly didn't write the first two books.
(The next paragraph describes the ending of the story, so skip to the next paragraph if you want to save it for yourself.)
In the end, Christopher Robin leaves at the end of the summer to go back to school. This could be a powerful ending where Christopher Robin says he will try to come back but isn't sure, but ends up in a "Mary Poppins" type situation, where the story ends by Pooh composing a poem wondering if Christopher Robin will come back.
The wording of the story is only slightly like the original story, and the poems fall flat. Little in the stories is really original, and a story about a drought feels hackneyed on arrival due to the fact it is invented purely to make Lottie the Otter have something to do.
To be fair, the story does have some inspired moments. (The first chapter is authentic, and Lottie does have a few funny quotes). But in the end, the book feels like an authorized sequel by A.A. Milne's estate, and not really like a book by A.A. Milne.
The witty wordplay and childlike innocence of the original stories aren't present, or not in sufficient amounts to warrant buying the story. Christopher Robin and his friends were better off as at the end of the second Pooh book, "The House at Pooh Corner".

NOT WORTH EVEN ONE STAR
I would have loved to love this book. Though I've always been content with the ending Milne gave us eighty years ago, I was curious to see how someone might try to pick up the story.

I'll be brief.

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus is DREADFUL. Not only does it fail to capture the original spirit, but it tries to update the "maturity" of the narrative -- throwing in adolescent identifiers, like Royal Doulton and Bournemouth and Edinburgh Castle and "household management" and "thesaurus" -- as if to suggest the stories are being told to (or created by?) an older Christopher Robin. It doesn't work. Nor does each chapter's laundry list of character action, as if each animal in the forest were a prima donna movie star, counting lines and demanding a larger part in the story. Do nearly all the characters need to be in nearly all the stories? No. Do they need to speak so much? No. No, no, no. And as for Pooh's "hums" -- well, for anyone who ever loved H. Fraser-Simson's musical interpretations of Milne's poetry, I can only warn you that there is absolutely no lyrical magic to be found between the covers of this tome.

OK, now I can tell I'm just getting grouchy, and I said I'd be brief. So here it is: the sad truth is that this book is *incredibly* boring. Milne's short and sweet has been turned into long and wearisome. I found my eyes drooping as I turned each page.

AVOID.

(The illustrations by Mark Burgess aren't bad.)

There will never be another A.A. Milne
I loved A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh series when I was young. In fact, The House at Pooh Corner (Pooh Original Edition) was the first full-length book I ever read. The stories of a little boy who was actually playing with his toys and woodland animals in his imagination are certainly quite charming. That led on to my reading other books, and many of the childhood classics I enjoyed so have become treasured pieces in my library.

Many of the books I've loved have had sequels written since: Peter Pan (100th Anniversary Edition) has been followed with the film Hook and the book Peter Pan in Scarlet, The Chronicles of Narnia were followed by an ill-fated and largely forgotten book called The Giant Surprise: A Narnia Story, goodness knows how many people have written further adventures for Alice and the Wonderland and Looking-Glass characters, and similarly, there is a countless number of further adventures in the Land of Oz written after L. Frank Baum's death. Many of these books feel like poor imitations of the initial author's style.

When I discovered that the Milne estate had authorized a new Winnie-the-Pooh book, I was interested, though put off a bit. I largely forgot about it, however. Finally, earlier this week, I found the book at a local supermarket while looking for a card. (Coincidentally, I had settled on a Pooh-themed card.) Thumbing through it, it piqued my interest. I rarely buy books off the rack (in fact, most of my books were collected through online orders), but I did this time.

I couldn't get my hopes up too high. As A.A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin Milne are dead, likely the executors of the estate could only do so much. There will never be another A.A. Milne, and though there are some impressive imitators, there will never be another E.H. Shepard.

I was surprised at the opening note, which featured the author, David Benedictus, conversing with the Pooh characters about the writing of the book, gloomy Eeyore claiming that he would not get it right.

And how did Benedictus do?

Ultimately, Eeyore was right. As I said, there will never be another A.A. Milne. While the stories were good and very fun to read, they lacked Milne's charm and the wit that flew over my head as a child but I picked up on when I was older.

That is not to say the stories are without charm, but it is completely Benedictus'. Some tones were different, for example, while death is not addressed directly in Milne, Bendictus' Owl mentions he has his Uncle Robert's ashes in a vase on his mantle, and they were scattered (and mostly recollected) when Owl's house blew over in The House at Pooh Corner (Pooh Original Edition).

Some of the humor was a little odd, for example, in a cricket game, when Christopher Robin explains that England and Australia have had cricket tournaments against each other, Kanga says that she and Roo will represent Australia. I didn't pick up on this a bit, then realized that of course, one of Australia's most iconic animals is the kangaroo.

Christopher Robin left the Hundred Acre Wood at the end of The House at Pooh Corner (Pooh Original Edition) to go to school, but Return to the Hundred Acre Wood finds him returning to his friends from the original books, presumably on Summer holiday. New adventures and endeavors are had by the characters, and we meet a new character, in the tradition of Milne. (Kanga and Roo were newcomers to the Forest in Winnie-the-Pooh (Pooh Original Edition) and Tigger arrives in The House at Pooh Corner (Pooh Original Edition).)

The new character is Lottie the Otter, a rather proud and haughty creature who comes off as a bit modern, but eventually, I forgot she was a new character and let her go ahead and join my old favorites.

Mark Burgess' illustrations are lovely tributes to how E.H. Shepard "decorated" the original books. They closely follow Shepard's original designs, while Burgess adds his own style.

Overall, if you can overlook that this is someone who isn't A.A. Milne writing Pooh stories (which, seeing how Disney's popular sugar-coated version has been expanded upon, it's not really the first time), Return to the Hundred Acre Wood is worth a read. I wouldn't mind giving it to a niece or nephew, after they had enjoyed Milne's original works.