Winnie-the-Pooh made new: who should write the next chapters?

Another sequel to AA Milne’s children’s classic has been approved. Time to consider the authors who should write it, says Alison Flood

We live deep in the Hundred Acre Wood in our house these days. My daughter is finally old enough to enjoy – to love, actually – AA Milne’s stories of Winnie and Piglet and Owl. I, alongside other classics from my own childhood such as Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, The BFG, Pippi Longstocking and My Naughty Little Sister, am delighted to read them to her. (I love picture books, but wow, these are much more fun.)

So I’m both happy and anxious to hear that Egmont is planning an “official anthology sequel” to 2009’s Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, by David Benedictus, itself the first authorised sequel to Milne’s tales. The publisher announcedon Wednesday that, to coincide with the 90th anniversary of the first Pooh book in October 1926, the adventures of Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh would be continued by four “outstanding writers with a real understanding for AA Milne’s characters and world”. Out next year, the book will be illustrated by Mark Burgess, who also worked on Benedictus’s sequel.

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