Wednesday, January 25, 2012

And ANOTHER thing...

Back in 2009 I wrote a couple of posts about "Return to the Hundred Acre Wood", the "officially sanctioned sequel" to A.A. Milne's Pooh books. I have since read the book (yes, I did check it out from the library) and visited Ashdown Forest myself, the real-life setting of Milne's books.

I just want to make one more point, and it's this: As a reading of Milne's books makes quite clear, Pooh and his friends do not live in the Hundred Acre Wood. Only Owl does, until his tree is blown over. Throughout "Return to the Hundred Acre Wood", author David Benedictus seems unaware of this most basic fact about the world Milne created.

Just as the real-life Five Hundred Acre Wood is a discrete part of Ashdown Forest, the Hundred Acre Wood is only one area of "the Forest" where Pooh and his friends live. I suppose it's the Disney song ("Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood, where Christopher Robin plays...") that muddied this distinction in the minds of Pooh fans. But you'd think the "official sequel" to Milne's books would at least have bothered to get the facts right.

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