“One January day when I was four, the au pair from Denmark who was helping out my parents while my sister was in the hospital took me for a walk in the woods. She’d been reading me the chapter in Winnie the Pooh where Pooh and Piglet go round and round the spinney in the snow, trying to catch the Woozle. ‘Let’s go and find Piglet,’ she said. The Keele woods were under snow as well, that day. The snow was deep and powdery on the paths, and the trees were smoothed, white masses bowed under the weight of winter, like melted candles. We passed through a zone of little fir trees near the bottom of the steps down into the woods, leaving behind a trail of big footprints and a trail of little ones…And there, perched on the hollow stump of an oak, was Piglet, wearing a small red scarf exactly as in the pictures. The soft toy versions of the Disney characters did not exist yet. She had sewn him herself from gray and white cotton ticking. It was wonderful.”

—Francis Spufford, The Child That Books Built (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 61–62.