Winnie the Pooh and Penguin:
Charming new book extract inside
ANYONE who grew up with the books of A A Milne will be well versed in the antics of Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore – but this year, the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood get a new companion: a penguin.
A new, official Winnie-the-Pooh sequel will introduce a forgotten friend of Christopher Robin, inspired by a long-lost photograph of the reallife child and his toy.
The photograph shows the young Christopher with his father, A A Milne, playing with the bear that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh and a penguin.
But while many of Christopher’s toys, including Kanga, Roo and Tigger, made it into the books, the penguin languished, forgotten in the photo album – until now.
It has been brought to life as the star of a new authorised story, Winter, published this October to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Winnie-the-Pooh.
It is the first authorised new character based on one of Robin’s real toys, with the Milne estate hoping it will fit seamlessly into the Pooh canon.
Brian Sibley, its author, is one of four writers commissioned to create their own stories for the new sequel, The Best Bear in All the World, serialised exclusively in The
Sunday Telegraph today. Sibley said: “I remembered seeing a photograph of father and son playing on the nursery floor with Winnie-the-Pooh and – a penguin!
“The thought of Pooh encountering a penguin seemed no more outlandish than his meeting a kangaroo and a tiger in a Sussex wood, so I started thinking about what might have happened if, on a rather snowy day, Penguin had found his way to Pooh Corner…”
The penguin toy is believed to have been bought as a gift for Christopher Robin by his mother, Daphne Milne, who purchased each of the toys that inspired Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger at Harrods toy department, beginning with Pooh on his first birthday. But while Penguin is believed to have come from the department store as well, it never made it into the books.
Winnie-the-Pooh will be joined this autumn by a new character, a penguin, as part of a fresh sequel to his stories. A lot has surely changed in the 90 years since AA Milne introduced the honey-hungry bear to the public. The Hundred Acre Wood would probably be filled with campers and even the odd boar – they’ve been introduced with such success in the Forest of Dean that they’ve taken over like a criminal gang.
There are no plans to introduce Roos in the forest just yet, though the mythic Heffalump has been replaced by another animal for Pooh to hunt: The Brexit. “Tigger is Very Excited,” explains Pooh to Piglet, “but Eeyore says it’s probably dreadful. I think it might be invisible, because Christopher Robin says that no one knows what it looks like. But Brexit most certainly is Brexit. That is for sure.”