For those who love the original Winnie the Pooh books authored by A.A. Milne and illustrated by Ernest Howard Shepard, the appearance of two contemporary authors at The Word bookstore in Jersey City was a walk down memory lane.
Since their publication in the 1920s, the Winnie the Pooh books have become a huge part of the English literary landscape, classics to which most other children’s books have since been compared.
The stories were inspired in 1924, when A.A. Milne brought his son Christopher to the London Zoological Gardens to see an already well-known bear called Winnipeg, or Winnie for short.
Although many people think of Winnie the Pooh from the Walt Disney cartoon productions, the classic books that emerged from that zoo visit became iconic representations of a childhood that for many had ceased to exist.
But even some ardent Winnie the Pooh fans are unaware that Winnie is based on a real bear and that many of the landscapes described in the original books actually exist.
In “Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear,” author Lindsay Mattick teamed up with artist Sophie Blackall to create a new children’s book that tells the tale of how Milne and his son stumbled into the London Zoo that day and to met the bear that would later become a part of English literature.
At the same time, author Kathryn Aalto, an American landscape designer, historian, and writer, found herself living in England. Her book “The Natural World of Winnie the Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest That Inspires the Hundred Acre Wood,” explored the real landscape in which Milne located the characters of his book.
The true story of Winnie the Pooh
In her book on the real bear, Mattick retraces the steps of her great grandfather, Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian. On his way to tend horses on the front during World War I, he stumbled upon and purchased a baby bear at a Canadian train station.
“The bear cub’s mother was killed, and so he bought the cub,” Mattick said.
Naming the bear Winnipeg, Colebourn decided to bring the bear with him, and it became something of a mascot for the troops through the voyage across the Atlantic to the camps in England.
But Colebourn realized a combat zone was not the place for a bear. So he brought it to the London Zoological Gardens, where Milne and Christopher eventually encountered it.
“Winnipeg – Winnie for short – let kids ride on her back and did tricks.” Lindsay Mattick
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“Winnipeg – Winnie for short – let kids ride on her back and did tricks,” Mattick said.
Using family photos and her great grandfather’s diary, she was able to reconstruct the story from the adoption to the meeting with Milne. She even has a photo of the bear with Milne and Christopher looking down at the bear from above at the zoo.
For years, she thought about creating a children’s book based on the documents and history she knew. But once she became pregnant she was motivated to begin.
“I first got the idea when I got out of journalism school,” she said. “But once I found out I was going to have a child of my own, I thought how amazing it would be to have a picture book. I want to read this story to my child.”
She knew she would need an illustrator. “So I camped out in one of the bid book stores and researched illustrators, looking for styles that I liked.”
Then she came across an adult book illustrated by Sophie Blackall – a well established illustrator, and magic happened.
Blackall fell in love with the idea, partly because she had been inspired to illustrate by Shepard, the original illustrator of the Winnie the Pooh books.
“Winnie Pooh was the first book she brought,” Mattick said. “I knew this was meant to be.”
They went to London Zoo to look at archival footage, and at the enclosures.
“We wanted to be as accurate as possible, where Winnie would have been,” Mattick said.
The world in which the fictional Pooh lived
Winnie the Pooh is part of English culture. But so is the landscape where Milne wandered.
Milne had an idyllic childhood and sought to create the same kind of childhood for his son Christopher and by default, Christopher Robin, the boy in the Milne books.
“I moved to England in 2007,” she said. She left behind a home with 20 acres of greenery and a stream. To occupy herself, she read the classics and did a lot of walking.
“I became curious if there was really a 100 acres woods,” she said.
Relocated in England, Aalto got it in her head one day to see if any of the places where Milne wandered as a child still existed. To her amazement, they did, partly because the landscape had become an environmental preservation area. So in her book, she walks the places Milne walked with his son Christopher.
Her book is divided into several sections, including a field guide, a biography of A.A. Milne, and a study of the plants and landscape.
She proposed doing a book, and started to work with an editor. Soon the book took on a life of its own.
“I did a lot of exploring, and found there was a real landscape,” she said.
While the map in the story books was not accurate, the places did exist. There was a forest 40 miles south of London, wind swept with purple heather, and shady.
She soon found other places, too.
“I’m a fan of the books, but not a fanatic,” she said. “But as I got to talk to people, many of them started to cry, talking about how their children and grandchildren loved the stories.”
The Milne books were not just a national literary treasure. They became a testament to a way of life that has since passed on for many people, the idyllic childhood that Milne lived and then recreated for his own son, and through the stories, for the world at large.
In some ways, her book is a portrait of how childhood has changed. Many of the people who came to woods and fields where the fictional reality was based yearned for the childhood of the past.
As an author, she began to realize just how important a project she was undertaking, and through this process came to love the characters.
Milne and his illustrator, she came to realize, were the Lennon and McCartney of their generation, something symbolic of English culture that she as an American had stumbled upon, and documented through her work.
The landscape she documents in her book drew thousands of people, adults and kids, searching for that sense of childhood. Although not legally allowed, many constructed houses of twigs such as those depicted by Milne and Shepherd as home for Eeyore, the donkey, began to appear. Many stood on the wooden bridge where Christopher Robin is depicted playing a stick game in the stream. Still more visitors came to the Milne house where the author and his son lived.
“Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear” by Lindsay Mattick and Sophie Blackall (Illustrator) can be purchased at The Word Book Store, 123 Newark Ave., in Jersey City, or on line at all popular book selling websites. More information can all be obtained at http://www,Lindsaymattic.com.
“The Natural World of Winnie-The-Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest That Inspired the Hundred Acre,” by Kathryn Aalto can be purchased at The Word Book Store, or
http://www.timberpress.com and other book selling websites.
“The Stranger at Pooh Corner,” a Pooh tribute book by Al Sullivan, can be purchased on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/The-Stranger-at-Pooh-Corner/dp/1507506724.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.