Darrell Baker

A good adaptation of a great Christmas special. I watched the animated show over and over as a kid, and now I rewatch it with my family pretty much every year.

Diane Wright Landolf has pared the origin story of Santa Claus down to its essential core, trimming out the narrator and the songs but keeping his turn as an outlaw practicing civil disobedience against an autocratic mayor. Darrell Baker art captures the likenesses of the stop-animation figures well, especially sexy Miss Jessica, one of my many lifelong animated crushes.

This adaptation will never replace the original, but it does whet my appetite for watching it again this year.

FOR REFERENCE:

Adaptation of the 1970 animated television special from Rankin/Bass Productions written by Romeo Muller and directed by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass. The movie was inspired by the 1934 song, "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie.… (mere)

After a morning when he cannot find any acorns on the forest floor, Piglet jumps into some catastrophic thinking and assumes there will never be acorns again because they are obviously all being stolen by voracious heffalumps. His unwarranted panic results in him becoming an advocate of nature conservation.

It's not a bad message, but the convoluted way Piglet comes to his epiphany and his subsequent fervor and virtue signaling is a bit off-putting -- not to mention it's going to require a pie tin different from the one he is shown using.

(Pooh Project: Phase 2! I've managed to catalog all the shorter Pooh books my family owns (see the list here). While I work through few remaining longer Pooh books we own, I'm missing my daily dose of Pooh, so I'm going to start seeking out some of the Pooh books I don't own – yet – from libraries IRL and online. See the reviews here.)… (mere)

A lively little guessing game gives you clues before each page turn as to who you are about to see. The closing "toodle-oo" especially tickled my funny bone today.

(Pooh Project: Phase 2! I've managed to catalog all the shorter Pooh projects my family owns (see the list rel="nofollow" target="_top">here). While I work through few remaining longer Pooh books we own, I'm missing my daily dose of Pooh, so I'm going to start seeking out some of the Pooh books I don't own – yet – from libraries IRL and online. See the reviews here.)… (mere)

Rabbit's in a bad mood after his day gets off to a bad start when little things in his routine go awry. His grumpiness sloshes over onto his friends as he snaps at them for simply wandering into his zone of wrath.

I find this all very relatable as I've often been the ass who has had to apologize for the collateral damage caused by my temper.

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... )… (mere)