Pay No Attention to That Bear Behind the Curtain

The problem?  Well, his room.  I mean, it’s a nice room if a bit odd.  Located directly behind my reference desk the space used to be a staff room.  When they renovated our location to turn us into a Children’s Center, they kept the little room and simply plopped Pooh and friends in it.  I’m making it sound a lot simpler than it was, since this "plopping" consisted of putting protective UV glass coating all over the windows, as well as the case containing Pooh and friends.  They even dimmed the light above them.  The result was that no one could ever see into the room.  People would walk all around our space then ask, baffled, "Is Winnie-the-Pooh here?"  We got very good at finding precisely the right words to indicate that was directly behind us.  "In the little glass room right THERE" [point point] was our favorite.

Another problem?  It made the space look gloomy.  I remember in particular one small Australian boy who said to me in the world’s saddest voice, "I just think Pooh should have a bit of fun."  It was like ripping my beating heart from my chest, that kid.

Well, no longer will I have to stave off the tears of small Aussies because a good thing has happened.  Penguin, as you may have heard, is publishing a sequel to the Pooh tales called Return to the Hundred Acre Wood.  In doing so, they want to throw a release party, and where better than with the real Winnie-the-Pooh himself?  So today we have Jim Dale reading, small children cheering, and a brand new mural unveiling.  Yes, that’s right!  A new mural will cover the previously white walls of the Pooh room.  The library had thought for a while that they might paint the walls (and you do not want to see the color of the swatches I saw during those discussions).  Then Penguin swoops in and says, "Want a mural?"  The library replies, "Yup!" and off we go.  Bam!  Instant gorgeous mural. 

I’ll post pictures of the party and the new mural when I get a chance but in the meantime, we are very happy with all of this.  Mind you, the new book has been the source of some discussion.  On NPR there was a piece on the new sequel with some diplomatic quotes from my favorite Kansas children’s literary professor Philip Nel.  That, in turn, let to child_lit Miriam Lang Budin subscriber , "What will be next? The second coming of CHARLOTTE’S WEB???"  Wow.  I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose that’s a possibility isn’t it?  Classic book sequels.  Honestly, I (for one) always got kind of mad about the ending of Stuart Little.  I mean, come on!  He never finds the bird?  What is up with that?  Someone needs to correct that.

But I digress.  Pooh has been getting into the news in other ways, perhaps not as cheery as this.  Pooh rights belong to Disney, judge says.  You can pretty much extrapolate from there.  And, naturally, this is the Disney Pooh and not the literary one, so make of it what you will.  Thanks to PW Children’s Bookshelf for the link.

And now, some photos of the unveiling with snarky commentary!