On 18 January 1882, in a row of London terrace houses, a baby boy named Alan Alexander Milne was born. His parents ran a small school, and one of his teachers as a boy was a young man named H.G. Wells, who would go on to write The War of the Worlds. Alan was a quiet, clever child who scribbled poems instead of doing chores. He grew up to write witty plays for adults and never expected to be remembered for anything else.
Then Alan had a son named Christopher Robin. For Christopher's first birthday, his parents bought him a stuffed bear from Harrods department store. Christopher named the bear Winnie, after a real black bear he had met at the London Zoo. To Winnie, Christopher added a small stuffed piglet, a stuffed donkey with a droopy neck, a tiger, and a kangaroo. Watching his son play with these toys in their cottage at the edge of Ashdown Forest, Alan started writing little stories about them. He published the first book of Winnie-the-Pooh tales in 1926.
The books exploded around the world. Today Winnie-the-Pooh has been translated into more than 50 languages, including Latin, and the original stuffed bear, piglet, and donkey live behind glass in the New York Public Library. Disney films, theme park rides, and merchandise have made Pooh one of the most famous characters in the world. The Hundred Acre Wood is based on a real patch of English forest you can still walk through today - bridges, trees, and all.
