Frankly, we wish all public readings by authors started with this warning, or one rather like it.
That’s Jim Dale, who you may recognize as the narrator of the seven Harry Potter audiobooks—last Tuesday morning, he came to the Children’s Center of the New York Public Library to read scenes from Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, an authorized sequel to the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A.A. Milne written by David Benedictus with illustrations by Mark Burgess in the style of Ernest K. Shepard.
In addition to a book launch (which brought several executives from Penguin Young Readers Group, the event was also an unveiling of a new set of murals depicting the characters, decorating an alcove in which the original stuffed animals owned by Christopher Robin Milne are kept in glass cases.
We’ve got a lot more video from the event, by the way—Dale reads from two excerpts of the new book, and answers a question about finding the new voice of Pooh.
Here’s the introduction to Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, which gives Dale an opportunity to show off many of the characters’ voices:
In this clip, Dale explains how he decided upon a voice for Lottie the Otter, a new character created by Benedictus, and then reads the scene in which she arrives at the Hundred Acre Wood.
Finally, after the reading, Dale was kind enough to explain to me how he settled upon voices for Pooh and his cohort, and why he didn’t find himself competing with Sterling Holloway, John Fiedler, and the rest of the voice actors for the Walt Disney Pictures cartoons.
(Sorry if the background noise on that last clip is a bit distracting; we were standing right next to the kids, who were getting their first look at the new mural and the stuffed animals just off-screen.)