Within moments she, too, was convulsed with delighted laughter. Absent-minded, yes, but there's a kind of unworldly wisdom about this bear. That's why Mr Sibley has written his own book in celebration of the great bear's exploits. The great thing about them, Mr Sibley says, is that the stories work on a multitude of levels. Kids love them, he says, because the writer of the Pooh stories, AA Milne, was able to capture a child's perception of the world so vividly.
Kids love that.
But adults love the books too, he says, because overlying the child's view of the world is a much more sophisticated, adult view. Anybody who has read them as a child and re-discovered them as an adult will find a whole new level of wit and satire in them, he says. You get a new view on the characters, and you realise that your own life is full of people like that. People as pompous as Owl, as bossy as Rabbit, as smotheringly mothering as Kanga and as bouncy as Tigger. It's true, you know.