A cold and blustery day contd...

 Quoting A.A. Milne about the weather got me thinking how sad I feel that his The World of Pooh stories are now being produced and expanded by Disney. So much of the original whit and humor of the stories is lost. Our family owns a few of the newest Pooh literature, and it is not the same! Much of the quintessential Pooh are lost in the new books. There is something simple and beautiful about the original works of A.A. Milne and the pictures drawn by Earnest Shepherd. The animals actually look like stuffed toys and in the black and white sketches, Pooh bear's shirt doesn't need to be red for a child to acknowledge him.  I do not know what the Pooh movies and TV are like now, but after seeing a little of Disney cartoons this spring, I can only imagine. I feel the same way about our friend, Curious George. Though I enjoy some of the newer works that are based on Margaret and H.A. Rey's original series, I am not a fan of the books based off of the Television series, Curious George. Though they may be slightly more educational, thanks to the influence of PBS, when you start adding new characters and busy animated pictures, I'm out! Margaret and H.A. Rey's drawings are impeccably simple and animated in a way that highlights George and the important pieces in the story. I wonder what could have happened if these authors had someone close to them carry on their stories instead of big TV networks. How would things be different? I think of Stan and Jan Berenstein's stories now being written by Mike Berenstein, their son. Though The Berenstein Bears have quite a reach into Television and multi-media, the quality and character of the individual books have stayed relatively consistent. Although I can tell the difference in the newer Nate the Great books written by Andrew Sharmat from the original, none of Marjorie Weinman Sharmat's characters have changed and the illustrations remained consistent. In my opinion, the stories of Babar were the stories that stayed truest to the originals. I couldn't even tell the author was different, until I looked at the date of the book and realized, Jean de Brunhoff would have passed away by the time this book was written. His son, Laurent de Brunhoff carried his legacy quite well. I'm not sure why I want my children to experience the same literature that I had as a child. I realize that things change and much of the illustrations can be done more efficiently on the computer now. But there is a certain whimsey and beauty that the sketch drawings provide that I want my children to appreciate. I want to feed my children's imagination and see where it takes them. Maybe one day they too will be producing television shows and computer games based off of their favorite literature, but for now, we'll stick to the classics.