I was in Half-Price books today and since I'm in the middle of my Pooh project, I couldn't resist buying a little something from their Pooh shelf. Appropriately enough, this used book was about the old adage, "one man's trash is another man's treasure." Less appropriately, this trash proved to be more trash than treasure.

The story lacked the humor, energy, and charm that the best Pooh stories have (I'm looking at you Milne and Zoehfeld). It dully traced falling dominoes as one friend's repurposing of a secondhand item resulted in another friend repurposing something, and another, and so on, until a sedate tea party and a couple bad poems put an end to it all.

The only value my daughter and I got from the book was realizing how much the artist seemed to dislike drawing Winnie the Pooh. We laughed as we counted up that two-thirds of the illustrations have him facing away from the camera, so to speak. Of the remaining third, he is looking down in three-quarter or nearly full profile; not once is his face drawn straight on.

A sad little addition to our bookshelf.

(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... ) ( )