#Maydays Prompt – Teddy Time

“If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

For today’s #maydays prompt it’s teddy time. Tell us about the bear in your life. Real or fictional you may decide.

Remember you can write a memory, short flash fiction, poetry or whatever may take your fancy and pingback here so that I can pop by and visit you. Don’t forget to TAG your prompt #maydays too.

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Know Your History – 14th October – Winnie the Pooh first published.

On this day… 14th October 1926 – Winnie the Pooh was first published.

With the first publication of the children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh on October 14, 1926, the world was introduced to some of the most popular fictional characters of the twentieth century – Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore. The second collection of Winnie-the-Pooh stories, The House at Pooh Corner, appeared on bookshelves just two years later and introduced the character Tigger.

On Creating Winnie the Pooh

Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin after his son, Christopher Robin Milne, and various characters inspired by his son’s stuffed animals, most notably the bear named Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin Milne’s stuffed bear, originally named “Edward”, was renamed “Winnie-the-Pooh” after a Canadian black bear named Winnie, which was used as a military mascot in World War I, and left to London Zoo during the war. “The pooh” comes from a swan called “Pooh”. E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books, using his own son’s teddy, Growler (“a magnificent bear”), as the model. The rest of Christopher Robin Milne’s toys, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger, were incorporated into A. A. Milne’s stories, two more characters – Rabbit and Owl – were created by Milne’s imagination.

 Did You Know?..

 You can visit most of the locations from the stories.

The Hundred Acre Wood, Roo’s Sandpit, Poohsticks Bridget and the rest are all fictionalized names of real places in the Ashdown Forrest in Sussex, England where Milne bought a country home in 1925. For example, the Hundred Acre Wood is really the Five Hundred Acre Wood and Galleon’s Leap is really Gill’s Lap.