...there'll be a certain forumite who I think might quite like the name...

click here

.. love the name






.. but I'm a bit of a traditionalist who was weaned on Winnie-ther-Pooh so I'm not sure I like Mr Benedictus messing with my childhood friends.




Methinks I shan't be buying his book

I feel the same. I still haven't read the sequel to Wind in the Willows or Gone with the wind. However good these books are considered to be, it doesn't seem right to steal someone else's characters and put them into your own stories.

I'm not sure a lady otter would have played cricket in A.A. Milne's day either.

I sort of understand why some writers write sequels to other author's books: not the cynical money-making side of things, but the real desire for the characters to continue their lives and adventures. But I don't think it ever works.

I did read Joan Aiken's book Jane Fairfax, a sequel to Emma, but to be honest I can't remember anything about it. And in Waterstones today I saw a very interesting set of Jane Austen 'sequels': Mr Darcy, Vampyre; Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters; and Pride and Prejudice with Zombies - The Classic Regency Romance now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem

Hmm. I think they should have stuck with the original characters... I mean, it's not as if the books are selling too badly that they're going out of print... parents of young children still buy them, and of course the new Disney versions.

Haha they're not sequels, they're the originals re-written. I've read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - it's actually hilarious - and I'm a huge Jane Austen fan.

Barry and me were looking at that once

I came across that on Amazon and thought it was some sort of belated April Fool's joke... Haha excellent!

They seem to be by different authors, and the author of Mr Darcy, Vampyre has also written another Mr Darcy book. She's obviously got a thing about him - and who can blame her I must say I'm tempted to take another look at the new versions

I did read the Gone with the Wind Sequel ages ago, too, and I remember just being very bored by it, whereas I have a definite soft spot for the original

I think that the Lottie the Otter character looks adorable, but wish it wasn't so obviously an attempt to update and make more pc When I was little it didn't matter a fig to me that there was only one female character in Hundred Acre Wood (I think there's only Kanga), and that she's the maternal type. In fact I'm certain I didn't even notice.

No no no no just NO!!

I think Roo is a girl... I don't think I noticed either.

No, Roo is a boy! But I think Roo is so young that being a boy or a girl doesn't make a difference, if you get what I mean.

New characters are wrong in WTP, sorry!
New fiction using existing characters can be good, can be dire. In too many caes, the author just uses existing characters in their story, and seems to forget the existing personality/characteristics of the person they are writing about!

I think you're right, Maizie - they all too often simply become the new author's own characters, who happen to have the same names and be in the same circumstances in which the original author left them.

Oops

Hmmm.

I'm afraid the name of the new character puts me off - VERY un-Hundred Acre Wood, IMHO...we didn't have Eeyore the Peeyore or Piglet the Wiglet...