One more glutton, the cutest of all. Not the hideous Disney caricature, but the original, A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, unable to resist a jar of hunny, the Silly Old Bear who covers himself in mud hoping to pass as a little black cloud to some bees...

This book is absolutely hilarious reading, something like an early Calvin & Hobbes; and the liveliness of E. H. Shepard's fabulous drawings is just unbelievable.

Edit: AAed version uploaded.

I can't resist a few quotes.


"The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey. And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it."

"When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is not to let the bees know you're coming."

"You never can tell with bees. I shall try to look like a small black cloud. That will deceive them."

"Have you an umbrella in your house? I wish you would bring it out here, and walk up and down with it, and look up at me every now and then, and say 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain.' I think, if you did that, it would help the deception which we are practicing on these bees. I shall do what I can by singing a little Cloud Song, such as a cloud might sing."

"The important bee to deceive is the Queen Bee. Can you see which is the Queen Bee from down there?"

"I think the bees suspect something!"

"I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important decision. These are the wrong sort of bees. Quite the wrong sort. So I should think they would make the wrong sort of honey, shouldn't you?"