After reading a 1100+ page horror novel I was in the mood for something a tad different and just a bit shorter... So where do I start with Winnie-the-Pooh? First off, it is hard to read this book without constantly comparing it to the Disney cartoons. I couldn't read Pooh's lines without thinking of the voice from the cartoons. For the most part the cartoons are accurate adaptations of the tone and characterisations from the book (however this book doesn't include Tigger).
The book has its charms and is nice and pleasant, but doesn't really offer that much to adult readers. There are no dramatic stories or moral dilemmas here... just Pooh wanting honey, Rabbit being sorta mean, Owl being a know-it-all and Piglet being cute. I would say though that the chapter in which Rabbit wants to kidnap Roo because Kanga and Roo are new to the woods and wants to scare them off is a bit weird. It really made me wonder why Rabbit is so mean sometimes, and why Pooh and Piglet just blindly go along with his plan. Maybe Milne was trying to say something about xenophobia, but without Rabbit learning some type of lesson, I'm not sure what that point would be.
As a children's novel it gets an A. Does it make my personal top 50? No.
-Dan
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