The Art of Winnie the Pooh

Join the eightieth anniversary celebration of Disney’s Winnie the Pooh with this must-have commemorative gift book featuring brand-new original illustrations by eighty Disney artists from around the world — a visual “little smackerel of something” for Pooh fans everywhere.

One of the best-loved characters in children’s literature of all time, Winnie the Pooh was born in 1925 from the twin pens of English playwright A. A. Milne and illustrator E. H. Shepard. Milne based the characters of Pooh and his friends in the Hundred-Acre Wood on his son Christopher Robin Milne and the boy’s adored collection of stuffed animals. The writer was inspired, too, by Christopher’s fascination with a black bear in the London Zoo named Winnie (short for Winnipeg, the hometown of the Canadian soldier who brought her to England as his regiment’s mascot in 1914).

The endearing bear of very little brain might have remained a purely literary phenomenon had it not been for Walt Disney, who with his unfailing eye for latent cinematic talent, gave Pooh his first shot at the silver screen in the 1966 featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.

Today, Pooh is a certified global pop culture icon, instantly recognized from the merest suggestion of his distinctive silhouette. Yet the cuddly, honey-loving bear wears his success modestly. He has never lost his unpretentious charm, his always adaptable good nature, or his taste for adventure, and in these pages he cheerfully offers his familiar roly-poly figure as inspiration for visual experimentation. Here Disney artists, designers, illustrators, and animators, freed for a while from their model sheets, capture the Pooh who lives in our collective imagination. These artists’ playful inventions reveal the bear newly incarnated in guises — and disguises — both familiar and novel, celebrating Pooh’s eightieth birthday with the gift of an alternative gallery.

This whimsical collection will delight art lovers and Winnie the Pooh fans alike, and is sure to remain a cherished volume for years to come.