NYC - Donnell Library Center - Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends

NYC - Donnell Library Center - Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends

Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, Eeyore, Kangna, and Tigger are the original toy animals that inspired the timeless classics by A.A. Mile illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard. When We Were Very Young (1924), Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and The House at Pooh Corner (1928) were first published in England by Methuen Company, Ltd, and in America by E.P. Dutton Company, Ltd.

Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends

Long before Walt Disney turned Pooh and his pals into movie stars, Christopher Robin Milne, a very real little boy living in England, received a small stuffed bear on his first birthday. Pooh Bear was bought at Harrods in London for Christopher Robin's first birthday. The toys were brought to the United States in 1947 and remained with the American publisher. In 1987, the toys were donated to The New York Public Library, and housed in the Central Children's Room in the Donnell Library Center on 53rd Street. The toys vacated the Center in May of 2008 in advance of the bulding's tear-down to make way for a luxury hotel.

The House at Pooh Corner is the second volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne, notable for the introduction of the character Tigger. The title comes from a story in which Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet build a house for Eeyore. Hints that Christopher Robin is growing up, scattered throughout the book, come to a head in the final chapter, in which the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood throw him a farewell party after learning that he must leave them soon--to attend boarding school, it is implied. In the end, as they say good-bye to Christopher Robin, they realize their time together is ending.

Chapter 2, 8, and 9 were adapted into animation with the Disney featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. Similarly, chapters 4 and 7 were adapted into Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too!, while chapter 6 was adapted in Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore. Chapter 8 was also partially adapted into an episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (entitled The Masked Offender). The final chapter was adapted as a closure to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, as well as in the direct-to-video movie Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin. However in the book, Christopher was going to boarding school and wouldn't be coming back but in the films he was just going to school and would come back at the end of the day.

Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends