A sure winner

With children's book publishing in the doldrums just like most publishing these days, editors are searching for sure winners. They seem to have found one in producing a sequel to Winnie-the-Pooh which will come out in both the U.K. and the U.S. in October 2009. The original story appeared a hundred years ago in a world far different from the one children live in today. Over the years, and especially after the hardships of World War II, the book was sometimes criticized for offering children a snobbish, aristocratic view of the childhood of a privileged upper class child who had a large supply of toy animals. Certainly no echoes of economic woes or the changing ethnic profile of British children appear in the book. Nonetheless it has earned a large following on both sides of the Atlantic. Because parents and grandparents are responsible for so much bookbuying for young children, it's almost certain that the sequel will meet with a joyful response. Whether 21st century children will be quite as enamored of the story as earlier generations were remains to be seen.