The Return of Pooh

We last left off with Christopher Robin in 1928, when A.A. Milne ended his second and final book about the boy and his friend Winnie the Pooh in an enchanted forest.

What ever happened to the friends after Christopher went off to school? Did they diss Eeyore and Piglet and Tigger after making friends with the Heathers? Did Winnie and Christopher ever fight over a girl? Did the bees mysteriously die off in the Hundred Acre Wood like they did everywhere else?

Well, wonder no more. The first authorized sequel to Milne's Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner has been green-lighted and is scheduled to hit bookshelves in October. David Benedictus, a British writer who has done audiobooks of the Pooh stories, won approval to write the sequel by the Trustees of the Pooh Properties, which manages the affairs of A.A. Milne and the books' illustrator E.H. Shephard. It will be published in the U.S. by Dutton Children's Books, an imprint of Pearson PLC's Penguin Young Readers Group.

"A lot of people have tried [to write a sequel] including me but most people only score eight out of ten," the trust's spokesman, Michael Brown, told the Times of London. "You have got to have somebody who scores ten out of ten and David seemed to have the feel and the spirit and the turn of phrase of the originals."

Benedictus says there will be no time lapse in the story even though eighty years have passed. His book, which will include ten stories, will pick up where The House at Pooh Corner ended, with Christopher Robin returning home from school to play with his friends.

Although this is the first new Pooh book authorized by the Milne trust, Pooh has had a few adventures since 1928. In 1961, Disney Corporation bought the film, television, and merchandising rights to Pooh. It has released several videos and television series based on the bear and introduced new characters, but none are held as dear to children's hearts as Christopher Robin, Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, Owl, Rabbit, Kanga and Roo.

by Megan Barnett