There is something innately warm and comforting dear old Winnie-the-Pooh at any time of the year but somehow it is at Christmas, when everything is supposed to be epitome of warmth and comfortable, that spending time with him feels most special.
Even more so when in Winnie-the-Pooh: A Pudding for Christmas, written by Jane Riordan and illustrated by Pritty Ramjee, we get to gather with Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo, Owl and Rabbit and cook up, as Christopher Robin declares must be done one day as he visits his favourite bear, ” a gigantic delicious pudding as big as Pooh.”
It’s the sort of undertaking that must be undertaken with a group of friends – “Food means friends and friends mean food and that’s all there is to it,” Pooh said, wisely – and preferably in a cosy home where holly and stockings festoon the mantlepiece and a candlelit Christmas tree sits resplendently in the corner behind a gorgeous armchair that all but demands you sink into it.
In this beautifully written book that perfectly captures the cadence of A. A. Milne’s writing and the vibrant characterisation of everyone at the heart of his well-loved books, we have a heartwarmingly festive time with Pooh and the gang as they each contribute in their own unique way – “Tigger bounced in eggs” while “… Eeyore offered words of advice and caution” – to the making of the titular pudding which, the sudden disappearance of Roo aside, is a wholly lovely thing.
It’s like all your favourite Christmas moments come together in one joyously soul-hugging way, with Winnie-the-Pooh: A Pudding for Christmas feeling like the perfect way to spend Christmas because it speaks to togetherness, love and friendship, all things Pooh does beautifully well and which are on full display in a book illustrated in such a way that it looks as Christmassy as the words sound.
It’s dangerous to say something feels like Christmas since that’s a gloriously intangible thing, and this book and the story within, are so snugly, huggably real, but Winnie-the-Pooh: A Pudding for Christmas does feel like the season in physical form, a written and visual reminder that whatever Christmas may be, it is a time when friends get together and laugh and do things with each other, and honestly who better to do it with that Winnie-the-pooh and the lovely friends from the Hundred Acre Wood?
