Customer Reviews

The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh

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I bought this book as a baby shower gift, and couldn't have been more pleased. It has an attractive cover, sturdy pages, and a good binding -- all necessary for years of bedtime stories! Like most classic Pooh books, the only illustrations are the original drawings, so the emphasis is on the story. One note: This is a big, fairly heavy book. It's something to be read to or by an older child, maybe at bedtime, but it's not as durable for the poundings board books get.

Finding a "Winnie the Pooh" book is easy. It all depends what you are looking for. For the many parents and grandparents hoping to read the wonderful stories to younger people the adventures of Pooh, Christopher Robin, Tigger, Eyeore, Piglet, Kanga, Rabbit, Owl and the rest, this will be more than adequate.

The large type is perfect for tired eyes being asked to read at bedtime, and is equally perfect for teaching young ones to follow along.

Ernest Shepard's pictures are throughout. Buying any edition with pictures by anyone else other than Shepard would disappoint Milne, of course, but also any of us who grew up with Pooh. Colored pen-and-ink drawings capture the intimate essence of the characters, and the soft meadows and fields of the 100 Acre Woods.

The stories are filled with poems and whimsy. The poems are like nursery rhymes, with the same playful tone of the stories. As delightfully written as anything in the English language, it all reads well aloud and quietly. There is more than enough to share through many months, and will entrance both child and adult throughout.

I fully recommend "The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh" by A. A. Milne.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

No childhood - or adulthood, for that matter - would be complete without the adventures of wonderful Winnie and his friends. This 75th anniversary edition is beautifully presented, and readers used to Disney's glossily commercial drawings will be amazed by the original Ernest H. Shepard illustrations featured here. Coloured by Shepard when he was in his 90s (!), Pooh, Piglet, Christopher Robin and co have never seemed more endearing and vivid.

But the greatest credit should surely go to A.A. Milne for creating some of fiction's most delightful characters. Reading this collection today after a break of 30-odd years, Milne's gentle wit and enthusiasm seem as fresh as ever. What a wonderful sense of life (and fun) the man must have possessed.

Pooh is the perfect antidote to today's cynical times!

The delightful full color illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard are what separate this combined volume from all others. A must-have for Pooh fans. The large type-set will be appreciated by those needing it.

For any collector of Winnie-the-Pooh this edition is a must have! It has thick pages and is nicely bound and will withstand many years of reading. I don't think I need to talk about the story--everyone is pretty familiar with Winnie-the-Pooh. It is a great bargain as it contains the COMPLETE tales & poems. It would make a wonderful holiday present.

Who could ever forget this heart-warwming, honey-loving bear? All the familiar characters are here, Christopher Robin, Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger. With Christmas just around the corner, what a delightful gift this would make for that special child on your list. The beautiful hand-painted, watercolour illustrations are of very high quality. This is a collector's item of tales and poems that your child can treasure over the years and one day pass on to his or her own children. For Pooh-lovers, this is truly a treasure to behold.

You can't go wrong with classic "Pooh". This book is wonderful in every way. The original illustrations (so different and, in my opinion, much more charming than their Disney counterparts) are integrated to the text, making the book come completely alive. I wouldn't hesitate to buy this for anyone I know, whether they have children or not. The stories are so cleverly written even adults will come away with something after reading them!

I'm sharing this review with the intention of being particularly helpful to parents of toddlers and preschoolers. I found that having a very young child with the attention span to sit through chapters of a novel left me scrambling a bit to find novels that were appropriate in theme and content for her age. I am reviewing each novel we have read or tried in the hopes of being helpful to other parents in the same situation.

We read Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne in this collected volume, moving from one book right into the next until we'd completed the entire volume. This was a great beginning for us because it is a glossy-paged, color illustrated version. Moving into novels from picture books is a transition, so having pictures in full color was still very much expected by my daughter when we started reading this at two and a half years old. The edition is something of a monster, a heavy lap book, but it was well-suited for bed-time. Well, with the exception of the extremely long chapters - you'll definitely need to start the bedtime routine early. But another thing that makes this book an ideal transition book is the fact that each chapter is a self-contained story. You can read any of the chapters in any order without upsetting the plot line of the novel (as there really isn't one). This is good because Meridian was accustomed to picture book length stories that move through a plot line in a relatively short period of time. This way you can read a story as a chapter, but still have the continuation of the larger work to introduce the idea of reading longer works of fiction.

The material was the perfect transition into novels in it's fantastical tour of the imagination through the eyes of stuffed animals come to life. At this time I don't think my daughter really got the concept that these were all just imaginary stories going on in the head of Christopher Robin as he played with his toys. To her Tigger, Pooh, Piglet and friends were almost more real than Christopher Robin who comes and goes from time to time. It's neat to think that when she rereads these stories in a few years, she'll discover a whole new layer. I don't think we could have found a better match for the level of suspense needed than we did. Though we're now reading books that are far more suspenseful than these are, it was perfect to start out with these gentle stories which so expertly navigate young readers through the concept of emotional characters (gloomy Eyeore, grouchy Rabbit, cheerful Piglet, etc). At her age, my daughter was just beginning to really explore emotion and give name to it. Seeing it in characters on the page could have been overwhelming, but Milne doesn't over-do it. He really understands that what constitutes catastrophe to young readers need only be something as small as a balloon popping prematurely. In fact, the only edit I did in the entire course of reading the book was to eliminate the part where Christopher Robin used a gun to pop a balloon. We don't do guns as toys, and it was easy enough for me to have him throw a rock. But now, so many months after completing these and so many books later, I can say what value there is in having a book you can just read from the page without having to worry about acquisition of inappropriate language or attitudes.

It doesn't matter which Winnie story or poem one loved most when growing up. They're all here to share with new generations of children and grandchildren, together with the the original art work (albeit colorized).

Personally, I'm rather fond of the poems--especially "Rice Pudding" and "The Mirror," from When We Were Very Young. But of course all the favorite Pooh Bear stories are here, too, one of my favorite being "In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and gets into a Very Tight Place."

This is 557 pages of pure delight, and at used prices, it's hard to imagine finding a better value for a gift, or simply for reliving a bit of childhood fun with your family.

Words cannot express the joys to be gained from reading Milne, over, and over, and over....

I bought this book for my grandchildren to introduce them to the real "Winnie-the-Pooh", not the Disney version. This is a gorgeous book and is one to pass down to the next generation. It's a classic in every sense of the word. This is "Winnie-the-Pooh" as I remember with the original illustrations and stories. Every child's library should have this book.