Return to the Hundred Acre Wood (Winnie-The-Pooh Collection) Review

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(More customer reviews)One would think that an official Winnie-the-Pooh sequel, approved by the A.A. Milne estate, would be a respectful and authentic, if light, sequel to the original Winnie-the-Pooh books.
They would be wrong.
The first chapter is strong, with Christopher Robin returning to the Hundred Acre Wood in the summer break between sessions of boarding school. But Christopher Robin is not the same, and therein lies a major problem of the book. The charm of the earlier Pooh books was that they were so innocent, each chapter an escapist outing into a world that had no ties to the real one. But many of the stories in the book (including a Spelling Bee that is ultimately cancelled and an attempt to start a school)feel like overly mature invasions from outside of the Hundred Acre Wood that ruin the integrity of the book.
Speaking of an invader, a new chararcter, Lottie the Otter, is introduced. She is fine as a character (if overly predictable- haughty but forgetful), but she is not a really well-planned addition to the story, and the end result comes across as what she is- an addition to the Hundred Acre Wood by someone who certainly didn't write the first two books.
(The next paragraph describes the ending of the story, so skip to the next paragraph if you want to save it for yourself.)
In the end, Christopher Robin leaves at the end of the summer to go back to school. This could be a powerful ending where Christopher Robin says he will try to come back but isn't sure, but ends up in a "Mary Poppins" type situation, where the story ends by Pooh composing a poem wondering if Christopher Robin will come back.
The wording of the story is only slightly like the original story, and the poems fall flat. Little in the stories is really original, and a story about a drought feels hackneyed on arrival due to the fact it is invented purely to make Lottie the Otter have something to do.
To be fair, the story does have some inspired moments. (The first chapter is authentic, and Lottie does have a few funny quotes). But in the end, the book feels like an authorized sequel by A.A. Milne's estate, and not really like a book by A.A. Milne.
The witty wordplay and childlike innocence of the original stories aren't present, or not in sufficient amounts to warrant buying the story. Christopher Robin and his friends were better off as at the end of the second Pooh book, "The House at Pooh Corner".

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