CNN decided to write a bio of Dr. Seuss in rhyme. Children will not be interested.

Beloved children's author Theodor Geisel (aka: Dr. Seuss) would have turned 104 this past Monday. Not the most obvious anniversary to remember, especially since the good doctor died 29 years ago. 50th? 100th? 300th? Nah, let's remember 104th.

But Seuss is still beloved by generations regardless, which led to CNN fishing for some quick web clicks this week where they wrote the briefest bio of the man in rhyme. It was supposed to be cute, as if it was one of his books--but really it's only if Dr. Seuss hit-the-bottle-and-regretted-his-career kind of book. Little tidbits like the following:
__________

But do you know how it all started?
Do you know where it all began?
The story of the man who
brought the world "Green Eggs and Ham"?
No need to sit and worry
No — we'll explain it all
Just sit back in your chair, relax and
Silent that next call
__________

Oh, boy. First of all, they think I'm taking calls? Listen, CNN, you text me if you need me.

Secondly, it's "silence," not "silent." It doesn't even change the number of syllables. Not that CNN was remotely counting syllables with this.

But I digress:
__________

Then Suess, he was approached
By the director of a board
They needed something new, they said
The kids -- they are so bored!
So he began to make a book
With not too many words
Less words, he figured, that might work
That's what the kids preferred
__________

"Fewer," not "less." Does CNN ever hire proofreaders or editors for their website? Oh, don't be silly! Proper grammar when writing about books is overrated.

And "the kids"?
__________

The book he made, it had a name
"The Cat in the Hat"
A blend of rhythms and cartoons
A different format
That same year, he dropped another
"How the Grinch Stole Christmas!"
A story of an odd green man
who's rude and too ambitious

__________

Yeeeah, sorry CNN, but the "The" in "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" is capitalized, as Random House's own book--and the following photo CNN attached to the story--shows:

You literally had the photo on your site, CNN, and still spelled the word incorrectly.

You know what Dr. Seuss would think?

You need to read more children's books.


PS: Lest you wonder why I don't begrudge CNN for their spelling of "The Cat in the Hat," it's because damn near all versions of Random House's editions capitalize every letter of every word in the title. No media outlet, CNN or anyone else, is going to capitalize every letter of every word like they're screaming.

Semantics? Damn right, it's semantics.

Math was found in a child's library book!

It's so great to see children learning in various STEM areas!

(((re-reads news headline)))

OHHHH, sorry! Meth was found in a child's library book. Meth. Like, the drug. Not math. Small mistake, but I digress.

According to The Tribune-Democrat Newspaper, a 4-year old dropped off a book to the Shanksville-Stonycreek school library (about 80 miles outside of Pittsburgh, PA) packed with a small surprise of meth.

Being a rural town where the biggest crime is burnt cookies and an overcooked noodle casserole, the local police turned over the case to the Pennsylvania State Police, where the investigation is ongoing.

The New York Public Library released their top-10 most loaned-out books of all-time...

...and the winner is a children's book. The Snow Day by Ezra Jack Keats leads the way.

In fact, most of the list is made up of children's books, which makes sense considering they're a quick read and children tend to mow through books in about five minutes. All the rest of the books on the list are quite short, too, ranging in the 300-page area.

The New York Public Library turns 125-years old in 2020, which means they're looking back at their history. This leads to wondering what books they've loaned out the most in that time. All books on the list are fiction, except one--the 1936 self-help How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

That's right--nebbish Dale Carnegie was an influencer long before Instagrammers wooed the masses and hawked moisturizers and salad mixes. The book was a major draw for decades, even leading Time Magazine in 2011 to award it as one of the 100 most influential books.

So, what cracked the top-10?

The Top Ten:

1.)  The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats: 485,583 checkouts

2.)  The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss: 469,650 checkouts

3.)  1984 by George Orwell: 441,770 checkouts

4.)  Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak: 436,016 checkouts

5.)  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: 422,912 checkouts

6.)  Charlotte's Web by E.B. White: 337,948 checkouts

7.)  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: 316,404 checkouts

8.)  How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie: 284,524 checkouts

9.)  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling: 231,022 checkouts

10.)  The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle: 189,550 checkouts


The Caldecott Medal-winning The Snowy Day was released in 1962, but eight of the ten books listed all came from a window ranging between 1949-to-1969, with only Harry Potter and the aforementioned How to Win Friends as the outliers.

If you're wondering why Goodnight Moon isn't included on the list, not only do you have a curious and discerning taste in children's books, it's because the NYPL's children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore despised the book and refused to have the library carry it for decades. She died in 1961, so by the time the NYPL reaches its 200th anniversary, the book will crack the top-10.

Today is National Book Lovers Day! And no one knows why!

It's one of those non-binding, unofficial, head-scratching "holidays"--like National Burrito Day!!--National Light Bulb Day!!--National Elastic Band Day!!--where the Ken and Barbie dolls on Good Morning America or your local news will fill up thirty seconds of airtime chatting about it with light, pleasant laughter and 20,000 watt smiles that have gone heavy on the Crest White Strips lately.

"It's National Book Lovers Day!" one anchor will say to the other at the news desk. "It's in honor of all those who cherish a good book, and readers are encouraged to cozy up with their favorite today and enjoy!"

Then there's a little back-and-forth between the anchors for ten seconds before they hand it off to the meteorologist with awkward, idle chit-chat about favorite books before a fifteen minute forecast ensues that explicitly details it'll be 82 degrees and sunny for the next week.

The point of all this?

Not only is the "holiday" only a holiday in name only, no one has any idea how it came about. Reputable news organizations don't reference any source, while websites devoted to keeping track of such days of the year say:

"While the day’s origins may be shrouded in mystery and rumor, the books themselves are not..."

Or this:

"Within our research, we were unable to find the creator or origin of National Book Lovers Day..."

In essence, anyone could lay claim to this with a reasonable story conjured up. Grow a spine and tell the world your grandpa or grandma were book distributors and created the holiday in 1887 in rural Iowa. Make it a family affair. There's no reason not to strive for such familial honor. People have claimed worse things in life after all, like creating polyester or Arby's.

Airline is going to supply books for kids on their planes.

The next time you fly European budget airline easyJet (assuming you're a masochist), not only will there be a placard and a doggy bag in the seat pocket in front of you--there might be a children's book as well.

Nicknamed a "flybrary" by the U.K. discounter, there will be over 7,000 books populating 147 planes in the fleet. Titles such as The Wizard of Oz, Charlie, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Peter Pan, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland have all been chosen by children's book author Dame Jacqueline Wilson.

The kicker to all of this is that only the middle seat in a given row will have a children's book in the seat pocket. So what to do if you're flying with two children?

Well, which child do you love more?

Speaking of Patterson, Bill O'Reilly is no longer a collaborator on children's books.

Last November, for reasons that probably have physicists, psychologists, and spiritual leaders the world over still trying to figure out, James Patterson released a children's book with former Fox News lothario Bill O'Reilly.

Titled Give Please a Chance, it focuses on one of Patterson's pet peeves: manners.

Yet, for the upcoming October 2017 release of Patterson's next book about good behavior, Give Thank You a Try, Patterson has gone it alone.

[[[GASP]]]

That's right. We're in the dawn of a new era. James Patterson actually managed to write a short story (albeit for kids) completely on his own. I know global warming is affecting weather patterns, but hell might have just frozen over as well.

The other significant matter is why Bill O'Reilly is missing from Give Thanks a Try. Was it because of the scandalous reports that got him fired from Fox News? Does O'Reilly have an aversion to graciousness and saying "thanks"? What's the story here?

The Washington Post reached out to Patterson, who refused to comment.

But when declining, did he politely say thanks?

Images of Winnie the Pooh are banned in China...again.

Xi Jinping looks to see who else he can blacklist.

You would think being compared to a portly, soft-spoken, kindly little bear that has a jones for honey would be a good thing. You're lovable! You're adorable! You're sweet and hugable!

Not by Chinese standards.

It seems China's citizens have routinely taken to comparing their president, Xi Jinping, to the classic children's book character, often sharing Winnie the Pooh images on their country's social media platforms. This hasn't made the communist government happy. Photos like the following are what have irked the powers that be:

#winniethepooh has been wiped off from China's internet, because of this 2013 photo. #censorship (via @FT) pic.twitter.com/3LlN7T4FCZ

— Ajit Ranade (@ajit_ranade) July 17, 2017

As a result, all photos of Winnie the Pooh have been blacklisted on China's social media sites, like Sina Weibo and WeChat. This is potentially because the 19th Communist Party Congress is being held later this year, so politicians want to be shown only in the best light.

If Winnie the Pooh isn't a comparison of being in the best light, I'm not sure what is. At least Pooh wears a shirt. By comparison, Tigger and Eeyore are entirely naked. Xi Jinping should feel flattered at this point.

Maurice Sendak has a new book coming out. He's been dead for five years.

Famed children's book author Maurice Sendak, arguably the most important picture book author in history, and who died five years ago, is apparently channeling his inner Tupac Shakur and releasing work posthumously. (Lest you forget, rap legend Tupac died many years ago, but out of his eleven platinum albums, seven were released posthumously. Now, it seems Sendak wants to be as popular in death as in life as well, too.)

According to Publisher's Weekly, in 1990, Sendak was interested in collaborating with the London Symphony Orchestra for a performance of Leoš Janáček’s Rikadla, a 1927 composition dealing with Czech nursery rhymes set to orchestral music, of which he had drawings.

But Sendak had his fingers in multiple projects at the time. His occasional collaborator, Arthur Yorinks, remembers seeing the drawings and having a brainstorm session with Sendak over the work, and how they could turn it into a book. Alas, Sendak became distracted by those other projects lingering around him, and the drawings never saw the light of day with London or anyone else.

Fast forward to 2016, and Lynn Caponera, president of the Maurice Sendak Foundation, was combing through mounds of Sendak's work to throw out, when she stumbled on the drawings. Presto and Zesto in Limboland, the work Sendak and Yorink brainstormed over, that the London Symphony Orchestra hoped for, was rediscovered--and Sendak's work continues, a la Tupac.

A release date for the fall of 2018, published by Michael di Capua Books/HarperCollins, is planned. No word on whether seven other random "lost" books will be found either, but time will tell.

In the meantime, let's remember Sendak when Stephen Colbert visited him shortly before his death, and revel in the illustrator huffing markers and dropping f-bombs:

The Colbert Report

Donald Trump doesn't read, even to kids.

When he was a running for president, then-candidate Donald Trump let the world know he didn't read books.

As The Washington Post described it--regarding if Trump ever read biographies of former presidents--he replied: "I never have. I’m always busy doing a lot. Now I’m more busy, I guess, than ever before."

The Post continued, explaining Trump's reading habits:


"Trump’s desk is piled high with magazines, nearly all of them with himself on their covers, and each morning, he reviews a pile of printouts of news articles about himself that his secretary delivers to his desk. But there are no shelves of books in his office..."


Fast forward to candidate Trump becoming President Trump, and nothing much has changed. At the annual Easter egg roll at La Casa Blanca--where presidents traditionally read to children--Trump still couldn't grab a random Dr. Seuss and take five minutes for rhyme time.

What we got was the Press Secretary--and human steam missile--Sean Spicer reading to some random child, alone, in a how-to of awkwardness:




Is that kid questioning his life decisions the entire time? Yes--yes he is.

Elsewhere, Attorney General Jeff Sessions read It's Not Easy Being a Bunny, a 39-page marathon that doesn't have much of a Wikipedia page, and goes for the low-low, moved-to-sell price of $6.01 at Barnes and Noble.

First Lady Melania Trump chose a children's book by Kathie Lee Gifford, Party Animals, to read.

First Lady Melania Trump read aloud "Party Animals" by Kathie Lee Gifford, celebrating differences & similarities in people. pic.twitter.com/yxNnASPqqE

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) April 17, 2017

According to the Amazon description:


"Successful talk show host, singer, songwriter, actress, and author Kathie Lee Gifford has come up with a delightful book for children! Lucy Goosy is carefully reviewing her list of animals to invite for her birthday party. She has to make sure to invite the right guests so that her party will be perfect. But when she focuses on everyone's bad qualities, instead of good, she discovers that there is no one to attend! With a little help from the Wise Owl..."

Okay, that's enough. I was lost after calling Kathie Lee a successful singer and songwriter. Amateur mic night at the Chuckle Hut has better creativity.

Instead, our First Lady chose a book written by a ghost writer most likely created by a morning talk show host to share at Easter. That, and it had human kamikaze, Sean Spicer, indulging in a creepy read-along with random kid alone.

Yet, nowhere was the president.

By comparison, Barack Obama routinely read books to children, and not books by television hosts:

Here is a picture of Obama reading Where The Wild Things are to some children in 2014. pic.twitter.com/94jcn8BRYH

— India Knight (@indiaknight) January 16, 2017

Admittedly, Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak never featured Donald Trump in a book, which explains why he doesn't read them.

This would be a missed opportunity by them. Or good sense.

The book translated into the most languages is...

...The Little Prince*, by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, which was just translated into its 300th different language.

The title of the book should sound familiar, and there's a solid 50/50 shot you were forced to read it in high school or in a freshman college class, where you likely slacked off, so things are foggy, but you entirely recognize the title from somewhere. (No, it wasn't made into a Disney movie. Yet.)

The novella, written in 1943 by the Frenchman de Saint Exupéry, has found a worldwide following in the decades since its creation. The 300th translated language of the book was in Hassanya, a North African version of Arabic, popular with Moorish tribes in southern Morocco, which is where Antoine de Saint Exupéry once lived and worked at an aéropostale** for France.

That said, there are an estimated 6,500 spoken languages in the world, and 4,500 of those are spoken widely. So, yeah, The Little Prince has a ways to go.



*The Bible and other religious texts have more translations, but they're not really gripping page turners written on a whim for artistic merit, y'know?

**Before it was a retail store for preppy people with way too much discretionary income to burn, an aéropostale was a French airmail company. I assume they were fashionably dressed, though.

Mark Twain's unfinished children's "book" is now finished.

To say Mark Twain has an "unfinished" children's book soon to be published is a bit fast and loose with the facts.

Doubleday Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, plans to release the lighthearted Twain fare on September 26, 2017, after author Philip Stead and illustrator Erin Stead worked to complete the book.

According to Doubleday, the story--The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine--"follows a young boy who eats the flower sprouted by a magical seed and gains the ability to talk to animals. From there, the boy and his new animal friends go off on a wild adventure to rescue a kidnapped prince."

So, it's like Jack and the Beanstalk meets Doctor Doolittle.

In 1879, while the family was visiting Paris, Twain apparently told his daughters a bedtime story following the plot of Prince Oleomargarine. Afterward, Twain wrote 16-pages of notes on a potential full-length book, but left it at that. For over 130-years, the notes remained lost until scholar John Bird discovered them at the Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California at Berkeley in 2011.

Somehow, 16-pages of Twain's notes evolved into a 152-page storybook with illustrations by two other people.

Notes = 152-page book.

A "Twain" book.

Notes.

Based on this metric, I have written tens of thousands of books. It's impressive, if I do say so.

Yeah, but how's Eeyore going to take the news?

Looks like Christopher Robbin is day drinking again.

To celebrate the 90th anniversary of Winnie-the-Pooh's first book, an authorized sequel will come out next month in the form of four short stories written by four different children's authors.

One of the authors, Brian Sibley, has decided to introduce a new character into the world of Pooh Corner. In his short story, The Best Bear in All the World, on a cold and snowy day Penguin arrives and befriends Pooh. As the name implies, Penguin is just that, a penguin, one that apparently has bad directional skills since he's somehow ended up in a remote British wood.

"The thought of Pooh encountering a penguin seemed no more outlandish than his meeting a kangaroo and a tiger in a Sussex wood, so I started thinking about what might have happened if, on a rather snowy day, Penguin had found his way to Pooh Corner," said Sibley to The Guardian, trying to sound all rational and reasonable.

Indeed, Sibley's motivation came from an old photo he saw of Winnie-The-Pooh's original author, A.A. Milne, playing with his son in the 1920s, a photo that includes the original Winnie-the-Pooh teddy bear playing alongside a nameless penguin.

Squeak looks as charming as muscle for the mob.

The famed Harrod's of London, which sold all the original toys that inspired the characters, told The Guardian that it believes the Milnes might have been playing with a toy the department store sold in the 1920s, a rigid, stock-still penguin the store named Squeak.

We all really know this just means Eeyore is being pushed to the side again. No one ever mentions Eeyore, and Penguin is now compounding matters. Poor Eeyore's just going to enter a level of donkey ennui unmatched in the animal kingdom at this point.




Photograph: Culture Club/Getty Images

First edition of "Alice in Wonderland" to go to auction, still considered sort of ugly.

When Alice in Wonderland was ready to be first published in 1865, the book's contented author, Lewis Carroll, was fairly pleased with its outcome. But the illustrator of Alice, Sir John Tenniel, didn't quite feel the same way though.

Tenniel wasn't just unhappy--he hated how his illustrations looked when they were printed by the machines.

A wonky looking Cheshire Cat meets Alice.

In June of 1865, 2,000 copies of Alice were printed, but the release was held. Fifty copies were sent to Carroll to own and distribute as he wished to friends and loved ones. Once Tenniel saw the drawings though, he turned to Carroll and begged a second chance.

On August 2, 1865, Carroll wrote in his diary, "Finally decided on the reprint of Alice, and that the first 2,000 shall be sold as waste paper." Somewhere, a town dump unknowingly became the richest library in England, if only for a day.

Carroll even bit the financial bullet for his collaborator, taking a £600 hit to do a second printing. In 2016 money, that's the equivalent of Carroll giving his friend nearly a £69,000 do-over.

In the end, the book was reprinted with different drawings and became an international treasure. Carroll's original fifty copies were handed out to various people, and over time the majority were lost. Twenty-three still exist, but only six belong in private hands. One of those six copies goes to auction this month through Christie's for an estimated purchase price of $2-to-$3 million.

With no regrets and no do-overs, hopefully.




photo: Christie's Images Ltd.

Ducks need to plan better.

A mother duck decided to lay eggs in the courtyard of a Charles City, Minnesota, elementary school recently. Why? Who knows? Because she lacked planning, nannies, and sensible life goals, I guess.

Eventually the eggs hatched, which meant it was time to head toward a nearby water source--and a parade of duck panic never seen in Make Way for Ducklings ensued. The Associated Press documented the duck dart and dash, proving that it's impossible for a mother duck to look laid back.




It is Minnesota after all. Winter just ended yesterday, and they have--max--two weeks before it's -20 again, so that might explain the duck panic.

100-year old 'lost' Beatrix Potter story to be published.

Tupac and Biggie aren't the only people coming out with new material long after death. Beatrix Potter is now pulling the same stunt.

Over 70-years after the Peter Rabbit author's death and over 100-years after she wrote it, the recently discovered The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots will be released this September. Long thought lost, a search was undertaken by book publisher Jo Hanks two years ago after she discovered a letter Potter wrote to her publisher in 1914. In the letter, Potter states she has a new story written centering around "a well-behaved prime black Kitty cat, who leads rather a double life."

Hanks searched the Victoria & Albert archive in London for the book, and found three 'lost' manuscripts, along with a sketch of Kitty drawn by Potter herself.

I think he just took out Peter Rabbit with a rifle.

The rest of the book's drawings will come from famed illustrator Quentin Blake, best known for his work alongside Roald Dahl.

The rest of Beatrix Potter's work will be released when she comes out of hiding and admits she's still alive.





photo: Beatrix Potter/Frederick Warne & Co. & the V&A Museum

"Purr, purr, purr."

Four lines. Four lines of a strangely catchy nursery rhyme first published in 1937 is behind a lawsuit.


Soft kitty, warm kitty
Little ball of fur.
Happy kitty, sleepy kitty
Purr, purr, purr.


The lawsuit was filed by the children of New Hampshire poet Edith Newlin, suing over copyright infringement because the popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory has routinely used the rhyme during the history of the show. Typically, the jaunty little poem is used to soothe the character Sheldon before he goes to bed.

Compounding matters is that the closing credits of the show have claimed Bill Prady, a producer on the show, wrote the poem--not Edith Newlin, who died in 2004.

As this image from a 1950's edition of Songs for the Nursery School shows, "Warm Kitty, Soft Kitty" easily predates The Big Bang Theory.

I'm confused how 'Blow, Wind, Blow' falls under the "Water" banner.

The Big Bang Theory can't be blamed though for choosing "Warm Kitty" as its nursery rhyme of choice. "Shunting Engine" and "Steam Shovel" never put any kid to a restful sleep.




photo: National Library of Australia

2,500 people got tattoos to write out the entirety of 'Alice in Wonderland.'

Temporary tattoos, though. It sounds a lot more dedicated when you think 2,500 people are all lined up outside some shady, back alley joint named The Stinky Ink just waiting for a fragment sentence to be forever etched onto their body.

But it's all a promotion from a company called Lithographs, which was looking to advertise their new line of--yes--temporary tattoos. It's like when you were six years old and got some temporary ink of a turtle or narwhal while at some birthday party, except more literary.

Lithographs started a Kickstarter campaign to raise $7,500 to fund the stunt, where 2,500 people who signed up were paid $1 and mailed a temporary tattoo with a fragment of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Contributor's were then asked to send back a photo of the fragment plastered somewhere on their body. And, of course, people got creative, or just made sure we knew they needed a proper manicure.

As a side note, professional hand modeling pays anywhere from $300 a day to thousands per hour. And you don't even need to be literate.



photos: Lithographs

'Alice in Wonderland' is 150-years old today. And now we can see what the original book looked like.

Alice's Adventures under Ground. 

That was the original title Lewis Carroll gave his seminal work, with a subtitle stating it was "A Christmas gift to a dear child in memory of a summer day."

Indeed, there was an Alice--Alice Liddell, specifically--the young daughter of the dean of Christ Church, Oxford, where Carroll was a mathematician. Liddell and her siblings spent time with Carroll, who influenced his creation of a world of make-believe down a rabbit hole.

Now, on the book's 150th anniversary, The British Library (which owns the original manuscript), has an exhibition commemorating the publication. You needn't travel to Britain to see inside the book though, as the Library has posted highlights on its website and Twitter.

Have you visited our #AliceinWonderland exhibition? Don't miss Carroll's original manuscript https://t.co/XXk3WnF1VT pic.twitter.com/4XwwydyHgx

— The British Library (@britishlibrary) November 26, 2015

Everything visually looks great, except for the larger drawing of Alice with what, I can only assume, is a pepper grinder while she works as a server at Olive Garden.




photos: The British Library

Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and The Raven all jazzed up in pillow form.

Once in a great while we dive into literary home decor--and nothing says home decor like a bachelor who writes a blog.

I'm an insomniac. This means I have no use for pillows, because I'm just going to be walking around the house, doing jumping jacks, wind sprints, and drinking a gallon or two of coffee. No sleeping after all.

But maybe--just maybe--if I had a pillow with inspirational Peter Pan quotes written all across it about the magic of sleep, I might just end up in the Land of Nod for once.

Sweet Meadow Designs creates a variety of pillow designs, most with words and phrases--but they also rely on quotes from Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, and even a little Edgar Allan Poe.

The Raven pillow looks amazing, but if I'm going to sleep--ever--I don't need something reminding me "Nevermore."



all from: Sweet Meadow Designs

Gather around children! Let's all look at Winnie-the-Pooh's skull!

The skull that belonged to the original black bear that inspired author A.A. Milne to write the series of honey-obsessed Winnie-the-Pooh books has been put on display for the first time at the Royal College of Surgeon's Hunterian Museum. And the skull shows that, indeed, the lovable bear had serious tooth decay due to a penchant for sweets.

You might be wondering why Pooh's skull is even at a surgeon's museum to begin with--or that there was an original bear to be the inspiration for Pooh. First off, A.A. Milne's son, Christopher Robin's (yes, same name as the book) favorite male bear in the children's books was, in real life, actually a female black bear, named Winnipeg, named after the city in Manitoba. Winnipeg's owner, Canadian Captain Harry Coleburn bought the bear as a cub in 1914--and took the bear with him to England for training during World War I, in what we can only assume was one hell of a transport across the Atlantic.

The original Winnipeg snacking on sweets and somehow not snacking on a child.

When deployed to France to fight, Capt. Coleburn left Winnipeg at the London Zoo, where she would live the rest of her days over the next couple decades. It wasn't until Milne took his son, Christopher, to the zoo--and that the boy decided Winnipeg was his favorite attraction--that the author began to create a children's book. Winnipeg had a sex change, went from black to gold, and became the classic we know today. Winnie-the-Pooh was born.

After the books were a huge success, visitors to the zoo routinely fed Winnipeg sweets (she was apparently a very friendly and docile bear). That surely made Winnipeg fat and happy, but it also rotted her teeth savagely. Dentistry on animals not being what it is today, no one thought much about it. When she died in 1934, her remains were donated to the museum, and the skull we see today ended up at the Odontological Museum section of Royal College of Surgeon's Hunterian Museum.

No word on whatever became of Eeyore.




I kind of wish I had a bear named Saskatoon now.