Winnie-the-Pooh, Ep. 1 - The Stories Begin

Winnie-the-Pooh was written by British author and poet A. A. Milne in 1926. Milne was born in London in the late 19th century and during the Great War joined as an officer in the British Army. Although he wrote many books and plays (including a detective novel, The Red House Mystery) he is best remembered for his books about the adorable bear named Winnie-the-Pooh. This delightful character was first introduced to readers in the poem "Teddy Bear" (from the book of poetry, When We Were Very Young), in which he is called "Edward Bear". The boy Christopher Robin was based on Milne's real-life son; and all the animals are based on the toys he would play with. After the success of the first book, Milne published a sequel, The House at Pooh Corner, in 1928. Both books have been loved by millions of readers the world over ever since; and more recently, the estate of A. A. Milne authorised an official sequel to the classics: Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, written by David Benedictus (with illustrations by Mark Burgess), and published October 5th of this year.

No doubt many will be most familiar with the Disney interpretation of Winnie-the-Pooh, which has become quite commercialized, but how many have actually read the original stories? E. H. Shepard, the illustrator of the original books, called Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh a travesty. And indeed the movies have lost much of the wonderful magic of the books.

For the past year CTD Productions has been busy working on it's own adaptation of the first book. It has now been completed, and we hope you will enjoy it. BUT.... if you are expecting the voices to resemble the Disney version, you will most likely be disappointed. However, our voices are true to the way the characters are described in the book. For instance, in the books Pooh is said to have "a growly voice", and Piglet's voice is described many times as "high-pitched and squeaky" (very different from the soft-spoken Piglet in the Disney films). If you have not read the original stories, I would suggest you find one of the books and read several stories before you listen to our production.

In this first episode you’ll hear how Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s front door, among other things.