A few years ago, I bought a box full of Winnie-the-Pooh Valentines, the little stiff paper sort ideal for folding, sealing with a heart sticker and distributing to a room full of classmates with shoeboxes carefully decorated as Valentine mailboxes. But I'm 13 years out of elementary school, so I don't have nearly as many opportunities to give out those cards. Thus, I still have some left, bright, shiny cards showing Pooh and his friends in primary colors and bearing messages like "It's so much friendlier with two" and "Roses are red, violets are blue, honey is sweet and so are you." So I have a tendency to associate Valentine's Day with my favorite tubby cubby.

There's so much goodwill floating around the Hundred-Acre Wood, there are several books in which Pooh and his friends exchange heart-shaped greetings indicating their fondness for one another. One of them is Pooh's Valentine, a second-level Step Into Reading book, designed to be read by children between preschool and first grade with help from their parents. It is written by Isabel Gaines, who has authored several other Pooh books, and vibrantly illustrated by Mark Marderosian and Paul Lopez.

Apparently the Hundred-Acre Wood is like my own city of Erie, where February is often the snowiest month of the year. I was born two days before Valentine's Day in the midst of a blizzard, and many a birthday since has looked a lot like Christmas. In Pooh's Valentine, the woodland is covered in a thick blanket of snow, which contrasts nicely with the pinks and reds of the tender holiday.

I suppose the title of the book refers to the fact that Pooh is the first to suggest exchanging Valentines with his friends, so it's fairly appropriate, but it might make more sense to call it Piglet's Valentine instead, since his cards make the biggest impression due to a mishap in the woods.

Clumsy Pooh ruins his Valentines by making them while eating honey, and Tigger gives up on his and goes bouncing. Even Owl, usually noted for cleverness, destroys his cards when he hangs them out to dry and they get snowed on. We never see those cards again. But Piglet's, dropped in the forest in a moment of fright, find their way into the ice skating pond, where they are frozen, decorating the pond with love for the rest of the winter. Meanwhile, back at home, they all have the cards that were successfully made by Kanga, Roo, Eeyore and Rabbit. Only Gopher and Christopher Robin are left out of the fun altogether.

It would have been nice if Pooh, Owl and Tigger could have salvaged their Valentines in some way; I guess Piglet just got lucky. I'm not entirely sure the conclusion is scientifically sound, since the pond was already frozen. How did the cards become embedded so deeply in the ice in such a short time? Also, when the friends are skating atop the pond, they make searingly white hearts in the ice, but none of them are wearing skates and I can't imagine their feet making that kind of an impression on the ice. But maybe I shouldn't be looking for scientific accuracy in a book about animated stuffed animals...

The book ends with an exhortation for children to make a card for a special someone - perhaps with a little help from the Silly Old Bear. Hopefully they won't run into so many complications, but Pooh's Valentine helps show how even mistakes can turn into lovely gifts.

Recommended: Yes