Winnie the Pooh and the Heffalump by A. A. Milne

Type: Fiction
Pages: 24
Published in Great Britain by Buzz Books (1995)

One day, Winnie the Pooh and Piglet planned to catch a Heffalump, a creature in which Pooh himself does not know. They got that particular idea in order to satisfy their curiosity after Christopher Robin mentioned about seeing a Heffalump.

Pooh and Piglet dug a pit and planned to entrap the Heffalump by making it fall into the pit. They placed a jar of honey inside the pit, hoping that the honey will be a bait to lure a Heffalump inside. The jar of honey was Pooh’s last jar which he kept at home. After that, Pooh and Piglet went home and promised to see each other again tomorrow morning to see if they succeeded in trapping a Heffalump.

That night, Pooh got so hungry that he yearned for his jar of honey back. So he quietly went back to the pit to retrieve the jar of honey. Pooh climbed to the bottom of the pit and ate the honey right there. Unfortunately he then got his head stuck inside the honey jar and had difficulty getting his head out.

Meanwhile, Piglet was so anxious to see the result of their Heffalump trap that he sneaked to the pit earlier than the promised time to take a peek at how many Heffalumps have gotten into the pit. When he saw Pooh, who was unrecognizable due to the jar being stuck on his head, Piglet got the shock of his life and thought it was a real Heffalump.

Piglet quickly summoned Christopher Robin to get his help on the matter. When Christopher Robin arrived at the pit, he immediately recognized Pooh and began to laugh. Finally Pooh hit a tree root in the pit and the jar on his head shattered, thus freeing him from getting stuck.

This book features the illustrations of E. H. Shepard, who was the original illustrator for Winnie the Pooh stories created by A. A. Milne in the 1920s before it was adapted as a Disney character. Being so used to the Disney version of Winnie the Pooh, I find it cute that Pooh seemed “naked” in this book without his red shirt.

Original illustration of Winnie the Pooh before he became a Disney character.