Author Jennie Egerdie on what to expect from Oh, Bother. Winnie-the-Pooh is Befuddled, Too
‘You get to hang out with Pooh and friends,’ Eckert says
Winnie-the-Pooh is nearly 100 years old, but a new book looks at what life would be like for the bear and his pals if they lived in our world today.
As part of a CBC Kitchener-Waterloo summer series speaking to local authors, Jennie Egerdie spoke with The Morning Edition's host Craig Norris about her latest book: Oh, Bother. Winnie-the-Pooh is Befuddled, Too.
Egerdie lives in New York City, but she was born and raised in Waterloo region.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Craig Norris: What can people expect from this book?
Jennie Egerdie: Oh, Bother is set in Winnie-the-Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood, which actually was written about 100 years ago now. It's a modern update that uses Pooh and friends to explore modern anxieties, but using humour and gentleness.
You get to hang out with Pooh and friends while they're going to therapy, sorting recycling, stress eating, but also just being delightful, gentle, lovely characters that we love.
CN: What made you want to do this?
JE: Over the course of the pandemic I was doing a lot of comfort reading of childhood novels and childhood books. That's because when I'm stressed out, I really like to spend time in, kind of, comforting familiar spaces, including the books that I love. When I was rereading Winnie-the-Pooh, I realized I remembered it as this perfect place, but it wasn't. Pooh got stuck in a hole, tails are lost, multiple homes were flooded with rain at the end.
What I loved about these books was how these characters dealt with challenges as opposed to just thinking it was the perfect space, and I felt like that was a great place to explore today's issues and challenges.
CN: Frog and Toad, another great book of yours, was named one of Vulture's best humour books for that year. What was that like for you getting that kind of attention for your first book?
JE: Completely bananas and deeply unexpected. On that Best of List other books were, like, by Mel Brooks and Seth Rogen and I felt very much like I'd snuck in and was like, what organ did I sell to get on this list? So it felt insane, but great. And this book, Oh, Bother, it's a different book, but it's totally similar in that I'm trying to do something to bring joy to people. When life feels hard I want to create something that feels a little more joyful and makes things easier.
CN: What do you love most about taking these classic stories and giving them that modern twist?
JE: I think a lot of times in comedy, gentleness is like an ugly word or something that isn't funny, and I completely disagree. I think gentleness — you can see yourself in it. It invites you in to be like part of the community and part of the joke as opposed to more of a pointing or harsh, which has its place too. But I really like the idea of building community with stories with gentleness and that familiarity, but also using it to not, like, talk down to the challenges in life. I feel like a lot of the times the options we have these days are either to completely zone out or engage in often really difficult topics in a really demanding way.
I wanted a book like this that would make me feel like, OK, like the things I'm worried about, I don't have to zone them out. I can just kind of accept them and let it be something that I poke fun at myself with and build some community that way.
CN: Are there any other tales you would like to re-imagine?
JE: I'm not sure yet. I started writing Oh, Bother two months after my first book. I wrote the Frog and Toad books and then I felt like I wasn't done with that kind of idea. And because environmental anxiety is a big part of my life, I thought, Winnie-the-Pooh lives in a wood. I was worried, I got concerned, so it felt like a good place to go with it. So, I don't know, I guess it'll depend on what's causing me to panic and hide under my bed next.
LISTEN | Author chat with Jennie Egerdie:
Throughout the summer, CBC K-W will be speaking with local authors. If you're a local author who has a new book or event you'd like to speak to us about, let us know by emailing the newsroom at yournewskw@cbc.ca.