Nancy Parent

Everything that is whimsical, charming, and witty about Milne's stories has been eliminated from this inane spouting of platitudes. Before your eyes Eeyore is transformed from the gloomy sourpuss we all know and love into an imaginative, happy little craft-loving darling. No thanks!

Tigger suddenly has a negative body image because his stripes make him different from the other Pooh friends. No, no, no, no no. C'monnnnn people, say it with me: "The most wonderful thing about Tiggers is I'm the only one!"

Regardless, Pooh, Piglet, and Roo gleefully enable his self-hate by spending the book helping him cover up with paint, mud, and honey. By the way, the author doesn't seem to know how mud works, making it instantly encase Tigger as if in concrete. Then, as randomly as show more Tigger's out-of-character worry about conformity began, it goes away in time for a happy ending.

Even with its dubious plot, the most disturbing part of this book was the revelation that Eeyore's tail is prehensile when he uses it to brush over an uncovered spot on Tigger. I don't think I have ever seen that before, as Eeyore's tail is very obviously a simple prosthetic replacement that is repeatedly reattached with only a tack.

Hackwork with a profound misunderstanding of the characters. Nice art though.

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less

A special occasion, a walk around the Hundred-Acre Woods with Pooh as he meets up with each of his friends one at a time, a book-ending party. This one leans heavily on the simplest and most over-used Pooh plot.

They even throw in Eeyore's tail going missing -- the second most popular plot -- but in an appalling move the problem is dismissed with a shrug, no one looks for the tail, and Eeyore is still tail-less at book's end. Nasty. And in a book about friendship!

(My Pooh Project: I love show more Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less

This book is bothersome.

First, I only picked it to read today because, as I was touching other books on the same shelf, this book's stupid round shape caused it to roll off the shelf and onto the floor. A book in hand is worth two on a shelf, I suppose. But this is not the first time this book has jumped shelf. Hell, I've probably spent more time picking it up off the floor than reading it over the last two decades. Grr.

Second, I'm not sure it's strictly accurate enough to be show more educational.

Let's start with the redundancy in the title of "happy" and "glad." Is the toddling audience ready to grasp the nuance that glad is a bit more likely to be applied to happiness one gets from another's good fortune? We won't get to find out though, because "glad" does not actually appear inside the book. False advertising!

"Silly" does make the cut, and I'm not sure that's even an emotion. Isn't it more a behavior that comes out of being happy?

"Sleepy" is another not-emotion that gets plugged in. That's just a biological state of being, like hunger, that can influence or induce emotions.

Finally, the design of the spinning wheel is not ideal. It can be hard to spin at times or hit frustrating tight spots. And you have to hold it just so, or you can inadvertently pinch the wheel inside the back cover and keep it from spinning altogether.

Needs more work. Come back when you have a new edition.

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less