In the Library
Winnie-the-Pooh
A.A. Milne, 1926
- Form
- Form Collection
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Accessible
- Reading time
- Reading time 1.5 hours
- Chapters
- Chapters 10
- Length
- Length 22k words
£1.99
Read in the app, yours for good. Not yet by post.
The book unlocks on your account as soon as you buy it, so the 14-day right to cancel ends once it is unlocked.
In the public domain in the United States only: this edition is sold and read there and nowhere else.
For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.
What buying means
- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
- The same price as in the app. Folio already opens every book on this shelf; buying keeps this one after Folio ends. A refund takes it back.
If you like this, try
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame
The Wind in the Willows does the same thing, but swaps the nursery for the riverbank, giving its animal friends grown-up appetites for adventure and home.
£1.99
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland does the same thing, but trades the Hundred Acre Wood for a rabbit hole, and gentle nonsense for a stranger, more anxious kind.
£1.99
About the book
A black bear cub at London Zoo was named Winnie, and a boy who visited her often enough gave the name to his own stuffed bear, then borrowed Pooh from a swan he used to feed on holiday. That small true history is the whole method here: A.A. Milne takes the actual toys off a nursery shelf, a bear of very little brain, a nervous pig, a grey donkey missing his tail, and grants each one exactly one flaw, carried without shame, until the Hundred Acre Wood feels more honestly peopled than most novels manage with real people. Pooh and Piglet stalk a Woozle round and round a spinney, never once recognizing the tracks as their own. Eeyore receives a burst balloon and an empty honey pot and thanks everyone sincerely for both. None of it teaches a lesson. It only asks you to remember, with an ache you didn't expect, how completely a child can believe in a game, and how carefully a grown man tried to write that belief down before it could get away from him.