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After contemplating the character of Mickey Mouse last month, I started to think about one of my favorite Disney characters: Winnie the Pooh. I realized I didn’t remember reading the original stories by A.A. Milne.
Disney purchased the rights to Winnie the Pooh in 1960, so any Pooh I’d ever known belonged to Disney. I wanted to see how he compared to the original.
Good news for fans of Disney and Pooh alike: much of what we love about the character is taken from the original stories. Many of the classic adventures of Pooh are lifted directly from A.A. Milne’s 1926 “Winnie-the-Pooh.”
No one but Milne himself could present Pooh with quite the same wit and charm seen in the books. But subsequent incarnations of Pooh and his friends usually remain true to the spirit of Milne’s original characters and his themes of family, friendship, imagination, and fun. Over time Disney expanded upon the personalities of the characters, but that is to be expected given the number of adventures Pooh’s had by now.
At least this was true until recently. After exploring Milne I read several contemporary children’s Pooh books and watched current Disney channel show “My Friends Tigger & Pooh.” What I found dismayed me.
In newer books, Pooh and his friends are merely familiar faces teaching morals to children. They behave as the plot dictates, not as they actually would. Forget expanding upon personality traits; the denizens of Hundred Acre Wood are given almost new personas.
They are overly concerned with learning their manners and behaving properly, whereas the original characters learned their lessons as a result of their often-mischievous adventures. Why not invent new characters, if Pooh and his friends don’t behave true to form?
The greatest blow, however, came from “My Friends Tigger & Pooh.” In the series Christopher Robin is reduced to the sidelines, appearing only rarely in favor of a girl named Darby and her dog Buster.
I am a strong supporter of equality in race and gender in the media, but I cannot stomach the replacement of Christopher Robin. It’s not because of nostalgia; I wouldn’t have cared a week ago. It matters now because I’ve since learned about someone: Christopher Robin Milne.
A.A. Milne wrote “Winnie-the-Pooh” and “The House at Pooh Corner” for his son. When Christopher Robin speaks to Pooh in the books, the narrator uses the second person, recalling to Christopher Robin what “you said to Pooh.”
Reading the books, I close my eyes and see Christopher Robin Milne curled beside his father in bed, eyes drooping shut as his father spins him tales about his adventures with his favorite toys.
Pooh and Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore are not just products of A.A. Milne’s imagination. They were actual toys belonging to and named by Christopher Robin. In fact, Christopher Robin named his teddy bear “Winnie the Pooh” after “Winnie,” the bear at a London zoo he frequented, and “Pooh,” a swan he encountered on vacation with his family.
The original stories of Winnie the Pooh absolutely shine with fatherly affection. I don’t doubt that A.A. Milne enriched the book with details on Christopher Robin’s real speech and mannerisms. He is the heart of the tale, giving it life. Remove him and the story is a skeleton of its former self.
I’ve loved Winnie the Pooh as long as I can remember, but now the version of him I am most excited to share with my children is not the Disney one I grew up with, but the one I just encountered when reading A.A. Milne.
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Growing Up with Winnie the Pooh: It’s Playtime with Pooh (2006)
Pooh’s Grand Adventure: the Search for Christopher Robin (1997)
The Magic Kingdom: Where to Meet Characters
*(This image by npmusikchild is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
