Best in Show
Bump, bump, bump, by EH Shepard, 1926, from Winnie-the-Pooh - Victoria and Albert Museum, London
“This is a pencil drawing for the illustration that appears at the beginning of chapter one in the first Winnie-the-Pooh collection of stories by AA Milne. It shows the little boy Christopher Robin coming downstairs with his teddy bear.
The artist and illustrator EH Shepard used white space and lines drawn over and over again to suggest the movement of the boy dragging his bear carelessly behind him. But the scene is incongruous with the text, which reveals Pooh is thinking that there must be better ways of descending the stairs. When you look at the picture, however, he’s a completely lifeless toy.
Little ironies like that add to the humour of the stories, which I recommend adults of all ages read, because they are often laugh-out-loud funny. Some of the puns, particularly, are just for grown-ups.
Children, on the other hand, don’t see the incongruity as they have no real boundary between fiction and reality – it’s practically normal for them to see a toy and hear that it’s having thoughts.
Every child has a favourite toy or place and makes up stories set in imagined worlds. And Milne’s tales can be serious adventures that involve scary animals, becoming lost, or the threat of falling into a heffalump’s pit.
A lot of people probably skim over the first line of the book – ‘Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head’ – but I find it fascinating because the writer is apparently telling us to look at the pictures to get the whole story.
The images are not there as pure decoration or to highlight a few details; they are crucial to the storytelling.
This multi-sensory exhibition, which I have co-curated with Annemarie Bilclough, aims to immerse people in storytelling and inspire them to fall in love with books.
We asked Tom Piper – the designer who worked on the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red poppies installation at the Tower of London – to come up with a concept and he’s done a marvellous job in bringing the text and language to life.
As we put the show together, our project management meetings were more interesting than most. Anyone listening in and hearing us talk about the tra-la-la and tiddly-pom drawings must have thought we were slightly strange.”
Interview by John Holt. Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 9 December to 8 April 2018
The artist and illustrator EH Shepard used white space and lines drawn over and over again to suggest the movement of the boy dragging his bear carelessly behind him. But the scene is incongruous with the text, which reveals Pooh is thinking that there must be better ways of descending the stairs. When you look at the picture, however, he’s a completely lifeless toy.
Little ironies like that add to the humour of the stories, which I recommend adults of all ages read, because they are often laugh-out-loud funny. Some of the puns, particularly, are just for grown-ups.
Children, on the other hand, don’t see the incongruity as they have no real boundary between fiction and reality – it’s practically normal for them to see a toy and hear that it’s having thoughts.
Every child has a favourite toy or place and makes up stories set in imagined worlds. And Milne’s tales can be serious adventures that involve scary animals, becoming lost, or the threat of falling into a heffalump’s pit.
A lot of people probably skim over the first line of the book – ‘Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head’ – but I find it fascinating because the writer is apparently telling us to look at the pictures to get the whole story.
The images are not there as pure decoration or to highlight a few details; they are crucial to the storytelling.
This multi-sensory exhibition, which I have co-curated with Annemarie Bilclough, aims to immerse people in storytelling and inspire them to fall in love with books.
We asked Tom Piper – the designer who worked on the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red poppies installation at the Tower of London – to come up with a concept and he’s done a marvellous job in bringing the text and language to life.
As we put the show together, our project management meetings were more interesting than most. Anyone listening in and hearing us talk about the tra-la-la and tiddly-pom drawings must have thought we were slightly strange.”
Interview by John Holt. Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 9 December to 8 April 2018