Neil Baker

A mashup of A. A. Milne's jolly Winnie-the-Pooh with H. P. Lovecraft's gloomy universe of Elder Gods? MUST HAVE IT!! MUST READ IT!!

This is just the sort of thing I was hoping to see when Pooh went into public domain: something wild and imaginative.

The Celery at the Threshold / John Linwood Grant ~ 3 stars

Christopher Robin, Pooh, and a handful of their friends set off on an expedition to find the South Pole, having successfully found the North Pole in the past. On the journey they come across a lost little creature that looks like walking celery, and they agree to help it find its way home. Then they meet a little girl named Dorothy Jane who is playing at archeologist and quite eager to help them explore the bottomless rabbit warren that might hold the celery's home.

While there are ominous tickles here and there, the story unfolds more like Milne than Lovecraft. It could almost be an episode of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh cartoon series.

The Very Black Goat / Christine Morgan ~ 3 stars

Once again, Christopher Robin and Pooh set out for a day of adventure and meet an out-of-place girl in the Hundred-Acre Wood. (I've not read a lot of Lovecraft, but did he also find girls scarier than any of his elder gods?) Even worse, she has a Very Black Goat with a Very Bad Attitude, and before you know it we have the first known instance of fisticuffs in the Poohniverse. Oh dear!

Back to the Black Bog / Lee Clark Zumpe ~ 2 stars

A meteorite lands in the Hundred-Acre Wood and begins to spread its evil taint. The predictable story could have been half as long if Eeyore didn't half-ass his efforts and dawdle so. Giddy-up, donkey! Pick up the pace!

Where Howls the Edgog / Pete Rawlik ~ 2 stars

Two big missteps here.

First, the author doesn't play fair with the characters, giving Piglet a personality transplant so he becomes one of Lovecraft's nervous and erudite accidental adventurers who yammers on and on with an excess of adjectives and SAT-prep vocabulary words. Owl, with his bluster and empty soul would have been much better in the role, though that wouldn't have worked as well, I suppose, with the next problem with the story:

We're supposed to believe hedgehogs are scary? Ain't gonna happen, sorry.

Head Like A Jar / Edward M. Erdelac ~ 5 stars

My favorite story in the collection! And perhaps my favorite Pooh story by an author other than Milne. Erdelac takes the mission statement of mixing Pooh with Lovecraft and creates a tale that is clever and moving and true to Milne's characters. He throws in a father and son theme to really drive home the emotional core.

A grimoire has been stolen from Billy Moon's little bookshop, but when he tries to retrieve it he interrupts a dark ritual that sends him to the Hundred-Acre Wood where a giant Heth-Fhah-Loomf'th has been unleashed to suck the forest and its inhabitants into its powerful trunk. Piglet gathers with Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit and Kanga, wondering what to do or how to escape. But the answer lies with the one who is not there, the one who only doesn't know and only doesn't care about a silly ol' looming apocalypse.

Yeah, Lovecraft’s dark old gods are always trying to come back and take over the world, but they had best beware of the new gods mankind has made in their absence . . . especially one whose power to see the bright side is as limitless as his appetite.

I laughed, cried, and cheered.

In Which We Discover the 101st Acre / Robert P. Ottone ~ 2 stars

This story has the unfortunate luck to follow the best story in the book while doing something very similar much less successfully. Here a dark, consuming fog is the menace overwhelming the Hundred-Acre Wood, driving the Pooh friends to a final refuge and a connection to the world outside the forest. It really doesn't help that the story is told mostly from Owl's point of view; I'm not fond of that bird, and this story does little to change my opinion.

Eeyore Makes a Friend / Jackson Parker ~ 3 stars

Oh, bother, another meteorite has landed near Eeyore's Gloomy Place. At least this one is having different effects than the last.

Eeyore finds himself in a psychological thriller that's a little too long and a little too predictable. And I really didn't appreciate that a dark turn Eeyore takes involves running Kanga through the virgin-mother-whore complex and ignores the canon timeline of the Milne books that has Kanga and Roo arriving together. Still the story manages to work thanks to the chill of its closing sentences.

When She Was Very Tired / Lisa Cunningham ~ 2 stars

Kanga takes center stage in this depressing metafiction about characters enslaved to their story. The grimmest story in the book so far.

The Statement Of Eeyore Carter / Kevin Wetmore ~ 3 stars

Eeyore drones on in a monologue recounting what happened to Pooh when a family grimoire passed down to him sets him exploring a dark stairwell under a tomb in a graveyard in a far corner of the Hundred-Acre Wood. The Lovecraftian bits are dull and leaden, and the characters are out of character with Pooh being an academic of sorts and Eeyore being quite loquacious, but the dialogue exchanges and a running joke about lunch amused me.

Acrewood / Jude Reid ~ 3 stars

In a tale that leans more toward Lovecraft than Milne, the Robbins' family vacation in the country goes awry when they find that the farm where their guest cottage sits is harboring a dark and deadly secret. It's a slow, satisfying build to a gruesome end for the holiday.

FOR REFERENCE

Contents:
• Introduction / Neil Baker
• The Celery at the Threshold / John Linwood Grant
• The Very Black Goat / Christine Morgan
• Back to the Black Bog / Lee Clark Zumpe
• Where Howls the Edgog / Pete Rawlik
• Head Like A Jar / Edward M. Erdelac
• In Which We Discover the 101st Acre / Robert P. Ottone
• Eeyore Makes a Friend / Jackson Parker
• When She Was Very Tired / Lisa Cunningham
• The Statement Of Eeyore Carter / Kevin Wetmore
• Acrewood / Jude Reid

(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... )… (meer)