“Promise me you’ll never forget me because if I thought you would I’d never leave.”—Christopher Robin, in The House at Pooh Corner
But will those who have never forgotten A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and The House on Pooh Corner be pleased with the first authorized sequel in 80 years?
Dutton, an imprint of the Penguin Young Readers Group, will find out on October 5, when it releases 300,000 copies of Return to the Hundred Acre Wood—along with an audiobook by Harry Potter narrator Jim Dale. Penguin is also reissuing and reprinting nearly half a million copies of its backlist Pooh titles. Egmont is releasing it simultaneously in the U.K; in all, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood will be published in 16 languages.
Veteran Pooh experts—British novelist David Benedictus and British illustrator Mark Burgess—are filling in for Milne, who died in 1956, and Ernest Shepard, who died in 1976. Benedictus produced audio adaptations of Pooh starring Dame Judi Dench (Kanga) and Stephen Fry (Pooh) and wrote novels such as You’re a Big Boy Now, which Francis Ford Coppola turned into a movie. Burgess previously illustrated classic children’s characters such as Pooh and Paddington Bear.
When Pooh Properties, which manages the Milne and Shepard estates, decided to do a sequel, trustees thought of Benedictus. Along with producing the audio adaptations, he had previously submitted a story that captured the charm and wit of the original and were, like Milne’s, “a wonderful celebration of childhood,” said Michael Brown, chairman of Pooh Properties.
The trustees came to “a general consensus that the market was right” for the sequel, said Brown. “Obviously that meant finding a writer and illustrator who had the talent and with whom we could work—in short, who in our opinion could do the sort of sequel which we could be proud to offer the public.”
“I did try to write the kind of thing Milne, if he was writing today, would write,” said Benedictus. “If I get decent reviews, that’s what I hope they would say—that the style of the book is honorable to Milne’s intentions.”
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| The four redesigned Pooh books, which are being reissued this fall. |
Still, some purists are pooh-poohing the new Pooh. “What you have essentially is an authorized Milne impersonator,” said Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Me. His question: can sequel writers be mediums who “channel” the original scribes? (His answer: no.) In his store newsletter in May, he asked readers to guess the real sequel among such titles as Strawberries for Sal, More Wind in the Willows, Harriet Spies Again, How the Grinch Stole Easter and Hitty: Her Second Hundred Years.
Others believe that quality sequels can introduce, or re-introduce, readers to the original stories. Heather Doss, children’s merchandise manager for Bookazine, says she is looking forward to the authorized sequel. “There are a lot of children who only know the Pooh from Disney,” she said. “I love the Disney Pooh as well as anybody else, but classic Pooh can’t be forgotten either.” The new volume isn’t Disney-fied. “Having the sequel be authorized by the Pooh estate gives it more street cred among Milne fans,” said Doss. “They know that attention was paid to making sure the new complements and expands on the original instead of being ‘fan-fiction.’ ”
And most young kids don’t care who writes a book, as long as they like it. “Children don’t recognize authors,” said Kathleen McGonagle of Buttonwood Books & Toys in Cohasset, Mass.
With the hoopla surrounding the new book, a new generation of kids may be tempted to read the original tales about heffalumps, woozles and wizzles. Many booksellers plan to place the new book next to the original two story collections, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, and poetry books When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. “It’s a re-promoting of the whole world of Pooh,” said Lauri Hornik, publisher of Dutton Children’s Books. “These books should be in every child’s home.”
Dutton isn’t alone: recently other publishers have developed sequels for various classics. With permission from author Louise Fitzhugh’s estate, Random House in 2002 published Helen Ericson’s Harriet Spies Again, a sequel to the 1964 story about a Manhattan girl who writes all her theories in a spy notebook. In 2006 Margaret K. McElderry Books published the U.S. edition of Geraldine McCaughrean’s Peter Pan in Scarlet, the authorized sequel to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Next January, McElderry will release the U.S. edition of Wishing for Tomorrow, sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1905 A Little Princess, written by British author Hilary McKay. Tundra commissioned a sequel for Mordecai Richler’ Jacob Two-Two character, which has just been released. And on October 12, Hyperion is publishing Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer’s authorized sequel to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.
Often sequels are controversial and unpopular with hardcore fans. To wit, there’s a Facebook group called “Boycott Eoin Colfer’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy novel.”
Still, many booksellers seem unfazed by naysayers and are heavily promoting Pooh. Four hundred Borders stores will carry a floor display with the backlist books. And Barnes & Noble’s 774 stores are also pushing the new title. “We know this book is going to lead adults and children to backlists, to the classic Winnie-the-Pooh stories that everyone remembers growing up with,” said Benjamin Ruby, a buyer for Barnes & Noble. “It’s certainly going to appeal to people who remember Winnie-the-Pooh fondly from their own childhood. There are a lot of Winnie-the-Pooh fans who will be interested in how the story continues.” He won’t reveal how many books Barnes & Noble has ordered, but said, “Our buy is commensurate with our excitement about this book, and we’re very excited about it.”
To help generate buzz for the book, many stores will be holding Pooh parties—usually featuring honey. After all, when Rabbit asked Pooh whether he wanted honey or condensed milk with his bread, Pooh, who didn’t want “to seem greedy,” replied, “But don’t bother about the bread, please.”
Many independent bookstores plan to decorate with paw footprint floor decals and balloons—materials supplied by the publisher. Dutton is also giving booksellers hundreds of bookplates signed by Benedictus and Burgess, to be placed in the inside front of the book; each store gets 20 of them. (Benedictus and Burgess will not be touring the United States.)
At Mrs. Nelson’s in La Verne, Calif., kids signed up for 15 spots at a September 26 party, where they will play pin-the-tail-on-Eeyore, eat honey ice cream and decorate wooden pencil boxes (a la Christopher Robin and Pooh). At BookPeople in Austin, Tex., children’s marketing director Mandy Brooks expects 75 to 100 kids to attend a Pooh party on October 3. They will sing “I’m Just a Little Black Raincloud,” feast on honey lollipops and honey crackers and dress up as Pooh characters.
Buttonwood Books & Toys in Cohasset, Mass., is holding a “beary” special story time on October 4. That same day, Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Ga., expects more than 20 kids to attend a party with honey-flavored drinks, a make-your-own Eeyore tail craft activity (with black yarn and pink ribbon) and a visit from a beekeeper with a hive and honeycomb (“Hopefully we won’t get chased around like Pooh did,” said store owner Diane Capriola). A day later, Page and Palette in Fairhope, Ala., will serve Winnie the Pooh cake, read the new book and run a guess-how-many-honey-drops-are-in-the-jar contest.
For now, only a handful of editors know the plots of the 10 new tales in the new volume. Dutton chose to release only the introduction; reviewers received no galleys or sample chapters. As a result, Hornik said, “[October 5] is going to be such a special moment.” The embargo is to make sure readers “open it fresh and all-out experience it new,” she said. She feels so strongly about the strict laydown that she won’t even read Return to the Hundred Acre Woods to her five-year-old daughter before the release date.
Brown, the trustee, and Benedictus, the author, would not comment on whether the new book will introduce any new characters. “That’s something I’m not allowed to talk about,” Benedictus said. “You’ll have to wait to find out.”
Milne’s 1928 The House at Pooh Corner ends with the animals throwing Christopher Robin a goodbye party before he leaves, presumably for boarding school. And the new book picks up there, with Christopher Robin returning to the forest. Benedictus did reveal that one of the first two Pooh stories he wrote—about Christopher Robin returning and rabbit organizing a census—will appear in the new book. The other—about rabbit suffering a mental breakdown and thinking he was a pirate—will not. The trustees “didn’t care for it,” he said.
Disney holds all Pooh merchandising rights—for everything from motion pictures to spin-off books using the depictions of the characters in the movies. And Disney just announced plans to release a hand-drawn animated feature film in theaters in spring 2011. Produced by Clark Spencer (Lilo & Stitch), the movie is the first feature film starring Pooh to be produced at Walt Disney Animation Studios in more than 35 years. But Disney does not hold rights to the original titles or to full-length sequels. Penguin has controlled the exclusive North American rights to the original four titles since they were published in the 1920s.
After the death of Milne’s widow, the beneficiaries, who included Christopher Robin Milne, decided to set up the trust to manage the copyrights. Christopher died in 1996; his daughter, Clare Milne, who has cerebral palsy, is still alive. All of the income of the Pooh Trust goes to its beneficiaries. The largest one is the Royal Literary Fund, which helps writers in need. Clare Milne gave a large part of her share to The Clare Milne Trust, which makes grants of about $750,000 a year to groups in Devon, where she lives, and Cornwall, to help disabled people in those areas.
Will there be a second authorized sequel down the road? “I doubt there will be another one, but you never can tell,” Brown said. “That’s what Pooh says: you never can tell.”
Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus, illus. by Mark Burgess. Dutton, $19.99 Oct. 5 ISBN 978-0-525-42160-3
