Just the cover of this book brought back memories of my childhood and of my children’s childhoods. The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk through the forest that inspired the Hundred Acre Wood by Kathryn Aalto explores the landscape of the Pooh stories. Illustrations original to the books and archival and more recent photographs appear on nearly every page.

The book, divided into three parts, starts with biographical information and a description of the collaboration between the author A.A. Milne and the illustrator E. H. Shepard. Milne and his two brothers spent hours outside exploring the countryside. The setting of the books was based on real places, Ashdown Forest and the Five Hundred Acre Wood, near the village of Hartfield. We learn about Milne’s professional writing career and his marriage in 1913 with Dorothy de Selincourt (Daphne). Christopher Robin was born in 1920. Daphne would play on the floor with her son and his menagerie of stuffed animals. She is credited as the first person to give voices and personalities to the characters in the books.

E.H. Shepard’s family gave him a love of the arts and his mother, who died when he was eleven, encouraged his study of art. In art school he met his wife, Florence Eleanor Chaplin. He and Milne knew each other through work on the magazine Punch. Their collaboration began when Shepard illustrated the 1924 collection of verses When We Were Very Young. He drew from real life, visiting the 'Woods' and Christopher Robin at play.

For the second part of the book Aalto researched the origins of the stories and it is full of photographs and illustrations. She seeks out locations of the stories we know well and describes them fully, bringing into her text descriptions of the family and of their neighbors. We are reminded of our favorite stories as we see the illustrations reproduced in the book.

The third part of the book is a guide to the Flora and Fauna of Ashdown Forest. For me, this section is most interesting. Aalto is a landscape designer in addition to be an historian and a writer. She visits the location of the stories and reports on its horticultural identity, which is something that I feel brings great depth and character to novels and memoirs. She never forgets, however, that we have picked up the book as lovers of Winnie-the-Pooh.