Ken Adcox

Public domain Pooh!

And OMG! Only in America would a Houston security company recruit a beloved British bear -- an icon of children's literature! -- to teach Texan kids how to try to survive a school mass shooting.

I became aware of this book due to the flurry of news articles last month as some Dallas parents were shocked to find the book in their kids' backpacks. I immediately ordered it from the publisher, Praetorian Consulting, to see what the fuss was about.

Aside from the galling juxtaposition of Pooh and gun violence, it's just not a good book.

I knew I was in trouble when I found an error on the very first page with this epigraph: "You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. - A. A. Milne" Milne never wrote these words. Anyone can verify this by pulling up the complete text of his Pooh books and doing some keyword searches. They aren't there. And that's because they were created whole cloth for the 1997 film, Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin, written by Carter Crocker and Karl Geurs. Yup, they are a Disney product.

Once I got past that, I was frustrated by the stupidest attempt at rhyming I have ever read. The rhyme patterns come and go, with little reason or meter, there when the authors can think of them, gone when they can't.

The art seems a result of someone poorly tracing E. H. Shepard's art and somehow adding 10 to 20 pounds to every character. Piglet is basically a playground ball with a head and limbs.

Then we come to disturbing images like Pooh hiding from gunfire in a honey pot -- is it a bulletproof pot? -- and Kanga donning boxing gloves to teach Roo to fight back against armed intruders. Kanga looks about the saddest I have ever seen her drawn . . . an expression many parents might have when reading this book.

The book came with an introductory letter from one of the authors explaining why it exists and a lesson plan to use the book in a classroom setting. I like how the "Required Materials" header floats over three items, two of which are parenthetically noted as being "optional." Which is it, required or optional? The optional items are additional materials you can purchase from the publisher for the lesson plan: stickers and posters.

The cynical profiteering is what really gets me in the end. Hey, kids are being killed, how can we make a buck? Instead of doing something to stop school shootings, they use Pooh to tell the children that it's all on them: it's an every person for themselves world and good luck surviving it. (And now that I mentioned the idea above, Praetorian Consulting is probably thinking about rolling out a line of Pooh-branded bulletproof honeypots for classroom use. Ugh.)

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... )… (altro)