As an escape from all the bad news happening around the world—namely, global wars, climate change disasters, and the affordability crisis—I recently decided to revisit A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, a childhood book I remember with particular fondness. My godfather gave me a beautiful hardcover edition, with E. H. Shepard’s wonderful colour illustrations, for my seventh birthday, in 1967. I could read by this time, but my younger brother and sister couldn’t. So my dad read it aloud to us at bedtime, sitting in an armchair while the three of us lay on my sister’s bed. Being a fun and imaginative man, my father used different voices for each of the seven anthropomorphic animals and Christopher Robin, bringing the book to life.

My favourite characters were the good-natured, honey-loving Pooh and the wryly melancholic old grey donkey, Eeyore. So the chapter I loved the most was Chapter Six, “In Which Eeyore Has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents,” as these two figure prominently in it. Another reason I liked this one so much is that when Eeyore tells Pooh it’s his birthday, he says, “Many happy returns of the day,” which is how my father always greeted me. (My birthday was the happiest day of the year, other than Christmas. Like many privileged young children, I received several gifts from my parents then, and I looked forward to getting even more from my school friends at my birthday party.)

In Chapter Six, Eeyore tells Pooh he feels sad because he hasn’t received any presents. Wishing to cheer him up, Pooh goes home to get him something. When he arrives there, he discovers Piglet waiting for him. Pooh relays the news. So Piglet decides he will give Eeyore a red balloon left over from a party, which Pooh says is a very good idea as no one can “be uncheered with a balloon.” He chooses a honey jar that Eeyore can put “useful things in.”

In a rush to be the first to offer his present to the old donkey, Piglet trips, landing on the balloon and bursting it. However, he still gives it to Eeyore as he has nothing else. At first the latter is disappointed with the “damp rag.” But once Pooh gives him the pot, he’s delighted to have something to store in it and happily takes the rag out and puts it in again and again.

Another aspect of this chapter that appealed to me as a young child is the silly, nonsensical song called “Cottleston Pie” that Pooh sings and hums to Eeyore. The first verse goes like this:

Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,

A fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly.

Ask me a riddle and I reply:

“Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie.”

“A Bear of Very Little Brain,” Pooh makes several amusing mistakes of comprehension that I’d forgotten about until I revisited this book. For example, in the final chapter, in which Christopher Robin gives Pooh a party to thank him from saving Piglet from a flood, Pooh thinks the “B” and “HB” and “BB” on the pencils he surprises him with stand for “Bear,” “Helping Bear,” and “Brave Bear” instead of “black,” “hard black,” and “very black.” To Pooh’s great delight, the “Special Pencil Case” he also receives contains red, blue, and green pencils.

This chapter made me feel especially nostalgic, as I recall looking forward to the new pencils and Pink Pearl erasers my elementary school teacher handed out to me and my classmates at the start of the academic year, as well as the lovely Laurentian coloured pencils my mother bought for me. (Of course, this happened long before children were issued tablets.) The thing that had pride of place in my own pencil case was a yellow plastic figurine of Pooh with a hole in the bottom of it, which I put on top of my favourite pencil. The figurine came in a box of Cap’n Crunch breakfast cereal. Looking back, I can’t imagine how I could have treasured this bit of plastic tat.

There are aspects of Winnie-the-Pooh you notice perusing it as an adult that you miss as a child, and these make it rewarding to revisit. For example, while Pooh is very pleased to have the pencil case, and nearly all his friends feel happy for him, grumpy Eeyore says to himself, “‘This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it’.” Here, Milne is clearly using the old donkey as a mouthpiece to poke fun at himself. So why not let him have the last word?