The Best Bear in All the World

A.A. Milne

Book cover

The only copy the Berkeley Public Library had of this was an audio CD version, which turned out to be a pretty good choice. We did miss out on the illustrations (in the style of Shepard), but it is pretty nice to hear the stories told by someone with a British accent (especially when one of the stories revolves largely around the ambiguity of an only-in-British-English homonym).

The stories in this collection are written by four different authors, and while I would say they are of varying quality and memorableness, they all meet the task and use a fairly Milnean style. (I especially like the part where Pooh gets the idea that if he and Piglet loudly compliment heffalumps as they walk through the forest, they won’t be attacked by any.) The best story in the collection is the one about another donkey eating Eeyore’s thistles, I think.

My Goodreads rating: 3 stars

IndieBound