Add in the luminous artwork of Sophie Blackall and you’ve got yourself a historical winner on your hands. The other? Written by one of the descendants of the veterinarian that started it all.
One book was researched and thought through carefully. But Finding Winnie has an advantage over the Walker bio that cannot be denied. The first of these books was Winnie: The True Story of the Bear That Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh by Sally M. With the anniversary of WWI here, the children’s literary sphere has witnessed not one but two picture book biographies of Winnie, the real bear that inspired Christopher Robin Milne and, in turn, his father A.A. If it’s not Midnight, A True Story of Loyalty in World War I by Mark Greenwood or Stubby, the War Dog by Ann Bausum, it’s Voytek, the Polish munitions bear in Soldier Bear or, best known of them all, the inspiration for Winnie-the-Pooh. What is it with adorable animals and WWI? Seems these days no matter where you turn you find a new book commemorating a noble creature’s splendor and sacrifice on the battlefields of Europe. Walker's book is informative, it reads more like a history lesson, whereas this book, despite being longer, reads more like a children's story (it's written as if Mattick herself is telling the story of Winnie to her own real-life son, Cole, named after Captain Colebourn).Ĭomplete with pages from Colebourn's own diary marking the day he bought Winnie, this is deserving of the Caldecott and definitely worth a read (if not a purchase!). It's also much more appropriate for the intended audience. Without doubt, the story presented here is superior, in part because of the sentimental factor of its being written by the great-granddaughter of Captain Harry Colebourn, the man who adopted the real Winnipeg "Winnie" the bear in 1914.
Of the two it was ultimately Blackall's neat, clean, highly detailed illustrations that won out and earned the Caldecott medal for this book. Kind of funny how that happened, huh? They both feature incredibly gorgeous artwork. I didn't think there would be any topping the other Caldecott honor true story of Winnie-The-Pooh picture book released in the same year and covering basically identical content ( Winnie: The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh).
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