Arts & Life

Celebrate Winnie-The-Pooh's 90th With A Rare Recording (And Hunny)

By NPR Staff

Published February 22, 2014 at 7:00 AM CST

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On his first birthday, Christopher Robin Milne — son of A.A. Milne — was given a teddy bear. That bear became the inspiration for the Winnie-the-Pooh tales, the first of which appeared in 1924. Father and son are pictured above in 1926.

This month, A.A. Milne's beloved bear celebrates a big birthday. Winnie-the-Pooh made his first appearance as "Edward Bear" in a short poem titled "Teddy Bear" which was published in Punch magazine on Feb. 13, 1924.

In honor of Pooh's 90th, we're listening back to a rare, 1929 recording, in which Milne reads from his book, Winnie-the-Pooh.

So find a pot of your favorite "hunny" and click the audio link above to hear Milne's reading.

Corrected: February 21, 2014 at 11:00 PM CST

The audio of this story, as did a previous online version, incorrectly attributes the excerpt read by Milne to his book When We Were Very Young. The reading was instead of a story that appeared as the third chapter of Milne's volume of stories called Winnie-the-Pooh.