My Very First Encyclopedia with Winnie the Pooh and Friends: Animals ANNOTATION
Combining stunning photos, charming illustrations, and simple text, these first encyclopedias help children explore facts about nature and animals in an engaging and informative way.
FROM THE CRITICS
Children's Literature - Barbara L. Talcroft
Here come Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Owl (plus a few others) to introduce pre-schoolers to the world of living creatures, including mammals, birds, reptiles, sea creatures, and insects and spiders. This is a Disney production, part of its "My First Encyclopedia" series, which includes as well a volume called Nature. Parents and children should spend some time looking through it together, as there is quite a lot of commentary that will need to be read aloud. Most of it is over-whimsical, which may or may not appeal to the very young, but probably won't to their parents. The book does include some striking color photographs, which is all to the good, but the constant intervention by the Pooh characters becomes annoying and distracts from the subject matter. Each chapter is introduced by a faux Pooh story about the content that follows, while between each chapter is a "Look and Find with Piglet" page with eight questions about the accompanying picture, done in a Disneyfied Pooh style that would have made Ernest Shepard wince. Although the information given appears to be accurate, adults will need to decide whether they prefer this over-animated and over-mediated approach to animal books that focus purely on the living creatures themselves. One does hope that parents will allow their children to become acquainted with the fictional characters directly from the work of A. A. Milne and Ernest Shepard. A good index and extensive photo credits are provided. 2003, Disney Press, Ages 2 to 6.
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