Today is the birthday of Alan Alexander Milne, better know as A. A. Milne.

A. A. Milne was born in Kilburn, London, England in 1882. His father ran a small public school called Henley House, and one of his teachers when he was only seven years old was H. G. Wells. It is always like finding interesting connections between people.

In any case, since today is the birthday of A. A. Milne I have been thinking about Winnie-the-Pooh.

Most of you may know that A. A. Milne had a son named Christopher Robin and that the characters in the stories were all inspired by his toys.  The stories are all richly illustrated by E. H. Shepard who was a cartoonist for Punch magazine and also illustrated many other books and poems.

One of my favorite chapters in Winnie-the-Pooh is the second one which is titled: In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place. The illustration above comes from this chapter. I love the story about how the greedy little bear eats so much that he gets stuck in Rabbit’s hole. Christopher Robin and the animals of the forest all work together to free the “Silly old Bear!”

Winnie-the-Pooh was published in 1926 and was soon followed by The House at Pooh Corner in 1928.

Of course most of us today know about Winnie-the-Pooh mainly because of the Disney adaptations and the vast array of collectibles based on them.

The one thing that I like about the series, whether it is the original books or the Disney adaptations, is that the animals all have distinct personalities. In fact, many of us probably have friends that like a particular character because of those personalities. I have one friend who likes Eeyore and he has a similar personality. I have always thought about which character I would identify with. The answer always comes up as Owl.

Which character is your favorite? Do you identify with one of them, or do you wish you were more like one than another?

I hope everyone had good memories of Winnie-the-Pooh today.

Steven