Winnie-the-Pooh goes to Harrods in new authorised AA Milne prequel
Once There Was a Bear by Jane Riordan and Mark Burgess will channel the original books’ voice and pictorial style using details from Christopher Robin’s real life
The story of how Winnie-the-Pooh went from a Harrods toy shelf to the home of Christopher Robin and the Hundred Acre Wood is set to be told for the first time, in an official prequel to AA Milne’s original stories.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Once There Was a Bear has been written in the style of Milne by children’s writer Jane Riordan, with illustrations by Mark Burgess emulating the original drawings of EH Shepard. It is the first prequel to Milne’s books and poetry about the bear, and has been authorised by the estates of both Milne and Shepard.
It will contain 10 stories just like Milne’s two Pooh story collections, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, and will see the beloved bear exploring the London department store where Milne purchased the original toy bear for his son Christopher Robin, in 1921.
The book will also see Winnie-the-Pooh visiting London’s Natural History Museum and London zoo, where he will meet his namesake Winnipeg, a Canadian black bear. In the 1920s, Milne and his son visited the real Winnipeg at London zoo, where she had been kept since her owner, a Lieutenant Colebourn, was posted to France with his regiment during the first world war. Christopher Robin loved Winnipeg so much that he renamed his toy bear Winnie.
