Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear by Lindsay Mattick (review)

A mother, Lindsay, tells her son, Cole, a true story about Canadian veterinarian and World War I soldier Harry Colebourn, who bought a bear cub at a train station on his way from his Winnipeg home to army training grounds. The bear, whom Harry dubs Winnie, becomes an army mascot as the troops head to Britain, but when the time comes to ship out to France, Harry sadly but wisely leaves Winnie at the London Zoo. There she enjoys visits from a young boy named Christopher Robin Milne, sparking his father’s classic tale, Winnie-the-Pooh. Harry returns home from war and starts a family, and Lindsay explains to Cole that Harry was his great-great-grandfather. The framing story, while extraneous, gives the story an appealing, cozy charm, and kids will certainly understand why Colebourn wanted to take the bear along, though the ethical issues of doing so are mostly glossed over by the book’s romanticizing of Colebourn’s decision (“His head said, ‘I shouldn’t.’ His head said, ‘I can’t.’ But his heart made up his mind”). Blackall’s art, in Chinese ink and watercolor on hot-press paper, possesses her usual folk-art appeal, and the khaki, green, and sepia palette of the Colebourn story is echoed but enriched with rosy pinks and shadowy touches in the framing sections. The album that Lindsay is reading to Cole is then presented to readers on the closing pages, with photos of the real Colebourn and Winnie (and Lindsay and Cole). Pair this with Walker’s Winnie: The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh (BCCB 3/15) for two approaches to the story.