I came across this delightful poem by Winnie-the-Pooh author A.A. Milne on X today.
I had not an hour before finished watching the film adaption of C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia.” Comparing the two stories got me thinking.
The Hundred Acre Woods is a made world as important and uplifting and vivifying a getaway as any. The land and its inhabitants help create a soothing place where stuffed animals and their young human companion can wander and wonder at will in a pastoral world where nature’s close at hand and nobody ever demands rent.
In the Hundred Acre Woods, everything is ultimately sweet and dear and it will all be right in the end. Things go along at a leisurely pace, the kind that make hearts beat a little slower and eyelids feel heavy.
There’s a moral code, too, that anyone can get behind. Everyone’s flawed but worthy of love, be they hyperactive (Tigger), perennially melancholy (Eeyore), terribly timid (Piglet), stout and marked by very little brain (Pooh), bossy and superior (rabbit) . . .
Okay, I’ll stop my laundry list you get the point. Also, again and again, A.A. Milne and his brilliant illustrator E.H. Shepard (1879-1976), remind us that it’s about the journey, not the destination.
Winnie-the-Pooh helps us look through the eyes of children, who puzzle at the grownup world, spend time in nature and have yet to acquire any cynicism.
Yes, the Hundred Acre Wood transports readers to a whole other world, this one simpler and softer. But it is a distinct and enduring world, one that becomes part of readers’ inner landscape.
In this way it stands, though not very tall, right along such celebrated literary landscapes as Tolkien’s Middle Earth and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia.
See more random musings by Sarah Torribio HERE
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