A. A. Milne (1882–1956)

I picked up 'The Red House Mystery' because I was intrigued by the idea of the author of 'Winnie The Pooh' writing a country house locked room mystery in 1922. The introduction, written four years after the publication of the book, was amusing and witty and augered well for a fun read.

Unfortunately, the book turned out to be too much of a meringue for me: finely crafted on the outside but with nothing of substance to chew on. Neither the situation nor the characters feel real, nor are they show more meant to. This is less a crime novel and more a tongue-in-cheek thought experiment about how a locked room mystery ought to be solved if a chap was gifted with strong powers of observation, an excellent memory and good reasoning skills. The murder is important only in so far as one is needed in order for there to be a locked room mystery to solve. The bright and brittlely droll amateur detective is mostly a plot device and the authorial voice is knowing and lightheaded, continually inviting the reader to acknowledge the whole exercise is a mere bagatelle, designed to amuse rather than challenge.

It's nicely done, in its way but, having reached the halfway mark, I find that I lack the motivation to go any further. The meringue, once bitten into, provides very little nourishment and the taste, however sweet, becomes monotonous.

I can see that this is meant as a light entertainment and is barely a step away from a Live Action Role Playing game but it has lost its appeal, partly through lack of traction and partly because I find the three-men-in-a-boat type of boy-men who are doing the investigating impossible to relate to except negatively. My lip instinctively curls at every bit of good chap banter.

So this goes back to the library with the mystery unsolved (at least by me) but I shan't lose any sleep over that. show less

This book has a special place in my heart because it was the first "big boy" book I ever read in Japanese. OK, that might just mean I'm immature. Eventually, years later, I read the English original to my daughter when she was little, and it became a huge favorite of hers. But deep in my heart, this little dude is still クマのプーさん and I have my dog-eared well-marked-up study copy to prove it was a bear to get through when I first read it.

A read-aloud to my youngest (7 y/o girl) at bedtime. In a world of 7-second scene changes and high stakes for every minor show, the pacing is drastically different here. Some of the classic tales that I remember from the Disney version are here, Pooh on a balloon to get honey and stuck in Rabbits hole, and the pacing is just nice, simple stories that are fun for all 7 to 700 year olds. What stands out is Milne's storytelling. The use of capitalization to make these simple moments as big show more moments or big titles lets the adult reader know that their child, who has a lot less history and experience underneath them might view these stories as bigger than what the adult thinks they are. So it's clear that while Milne is writing stories for his child, he's reminding the reader that they need to remember to read the stories with the mind of a child, and that is not a put-down to children and their minds.

Pooh's little songs he makes up and boops and bops along tie him to a child, who experience teaches the parents, that this happens on many occasions. And not to psychoanalyze the story too much, but the characters' personalities are consistent with them as the child can go through these same kinds of moods and even jump from one to another in their own play and experience. The friendship maintained amongst the characters might seem at odds but considering that they speak truthfully to what the child feels within themselves and needs to "play safely" with these feelings to figure out how to balance them, the stories hold the cohesive nature without the other characters have to teach the lesson to the other characters.

I believe A.A. Milne is a genius at sneaking lessons to both children and adults in these stories. His use of language is poetic and each story holds some fascinating look for daughter...and father alike. Final Grade - A+ show less

An appallingly poorly drawn adaptation of one of my favorite Pooh films, which in turn adapts two of my favorite chapters from Milne's original Pooh books. First, Pooh invents Pooh Sticks and discovers Eeyore floating down the stream after an unfortunate bounce. Then he scrambles to find a last-second birthday present for Eeyore.

The text drops anything clever or humorous from the script while the art has a carelessly drawn quality that gives the characters ridiculous expressions and body show more proportions.

Skip this and read the much better adaptation of the same title by writer Teddy Slater and illustrators Bill Langley and John Kurtz

FOR REFERENCE:

An adaptation by anonymous Disney drones of the 1983 Walt Disney short film, Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore, directed by Rick Reinert; story by Peter Young, Steve Hulett, and Tony L. Marino; based on the original works of A. A. Milne and Ernest H. Shepard. The film specifically adapts Winnie-the-Pooh Chapter 6: In Which Eeyore Has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents and The House at Pooh Corner Chapter 6: In Which Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In. show less