Md. Taqi Yasir
Winnie-the-Pooh greets Queen Elizabeth the Second and a boy who resembles her great-grandson Prince George in a new story published last Thursday to mark and reminiscence both their 90th birthdays. The honey loving bear of A. A. Milne, who first emerged in a story in 1926, the year of the Britain’s Queen’s birth, travelled to London with Christopher Robin, Eeyore the gloomy donkey and Piglet to give the Royal Family a birthday “hum” or poem. They met her by chance outside Buckingham Palace, where she was holding the hand of an anonymous young boy, described as almost as effervescent as Tigger and looking amazingly alike to Prince William’s son George. Winnie-the-Pooh notably tried to see the King in the poem named Buckingham Palace, but he was “much too busy a-signing things”. They went home for tea after watching the “Changing of the guards.” Jane Riordan wrote Winnie-the-Pooh and The Royal Birthday with illustrations by Mark Burgess, who also sketched the pictures for Return to the Hundred Acre Wood in 2009, the first official volume since Milne’s demise.It is free to download from the Disney official website and there is an audio account narrated by Oscar-winning actor Jim Broadbent, who said it had been an admiration to record. “I have been a fan of Winnie-the-Pooh since I was a boy, in fact I named my very first and much loved teddy Pooh, and that can only have been after the A.A. Milne character,” he said in a statement. The Pooh told the Queen to enjoy the children’s folk tales with a childlike mentality.