Winnie the Pooh is such an adorable, lovable character, and until I read FINDING WINNIE, I had no idea he was based on an actual bear! And it’s an absolutely charming story.
Basically, a veterinarian from Winnipeg enlisted in the military and by chance, while stopping at a train station, came across a trapper with a bear cub on a leash. The trapper had killed the bear’s mother and didn’t want the cub. The vet bought the bear for $20 and named it Winnipeg. Everyone at the army post called the bear “Winnie” for short, but then, when they had to ship overseas, the vet arranged for Winnie to stay at the zoo.
Now, because Winnie was so tame, and because this was over 100 years ago, the zoo allowed children to play with him! One of the kids was no other than Christopher Robin! His father, A. A. Milne, watched them play and used them for inspiration for all the stories that the world knows and loves today. How cool is that?
The illustrations by Sophie Blackall won this book a Caldecott Medal and the author, Lindsay Mattick, is actually the great granddaughter of the vet!
She writes the book as a story in a story, where she is telling the story to her son, who is the vet’s namesake. This structure is difficult to do in a picture book, where you have such limited space, but Mattick pulls it off beautifully. The real photographs of Winnie with the soldiers and with Christopher Robin are such a treasure, too!
The same year that FINDING WINNIE came out (2015), so did WINNIE: THE TRUE STORY OF THE BEAR WHO INSPIRED WINNIE-THE-POOH by Sally M. Walker! Basically, that’s a writer’s worst nightmare to have the story you’ve been researching and laboring over for years go out with a different publisher at the exact same time, but I think the world is better off with both of these versions.
The story is much the same, but there’s more fun details and photographs that you wouldn’t know from just the one. The illustrations by Jonathan D. Voss are beautiful as well.
Whether you’re a fan of Winnie the Pooh, or not, these stories are fascinating pieces of history that are definitely worth checking out.
Happy reading!
Books for Curious Kids 