Just because it’s been ages since you read your favorite children’s books doesn’t mean the stories ended for the characters inside. Here’s what happened to them after you closed the cover.
Winnie-the-Pooh
When Christopher Robin leaves for good at the end of “The House at Pooh Corner,” the inhabitants of One Hundred Acre Wood must learn to fend for themselves. So they hastily assemble a government and put Winnie-the-Pooh in charge, believing his easy-going naturewill make him a pushover and everyone will be able to do what they want. Alas, Pooh quickly develops a taste for power and soon the woods are plastered with giant banners featuring Winnie’s stern demeanor as the bear demands a tax of 100 pots of honey per person per dayor face banishment to wherever Hobbes the Tiger wound up. Now years later Pooh’s Woods receives military assistance from the U.S. as it secretly collaborates with terrorists to destroy the Robins’ estate.
The Little Prince
The Little Prince’s past comes back to haunt him as we learn how he systematically killed every member of his royal family to rule an asteroid whose citizenry consists of a single rose. The loneliness, though, gets to the prince as he begins to lose his mind, resulting in images from the Hubble Space Telecsope of a small French boy building military weapons out of handfuls of pebbles and screaming orders at a long-dead flower. NASA sends an exploratory mission to the asteroid to help the prince but by the time they reach him he has passed away, leaving behind a note written in French immediately surrendering the planet to the Germans.
Harold And The Purple Crayon
Now a middle-aged man, Harold laments how he squandered such a precious gift as a purple crayon that magically brings whatever he draws to life. That’s because rather than use his artistic powers for good to prevent pestilence, end world famine and bring delight to children of all ages through endlessly imaginative and curative illustrations, the then four-year-old Harold thoughtlessly drew wave after wave of giant, killer acid-spray robots that roam the land to this day.
Eloise
Eloise finally learns there never were any wealthy parents and that she and her nanny have been illegally squatting in New York City’s Plaza Hotel when someone rents “the room on the tippy-top floor.” This setting of the book series then switches to a room at an Embassy Suites in Stamford, Connecticut. There, Eloise gets into such zany scrapes as choking on a day-old Danish at the motel’s breakfast bar, never finding an ice machine that actually makes any ice and running smack dab in the middle of the annual Northeast Actuary Conference on Property and Casualty Insurance in Conference Room B and immediately falling asleep.
Bunnicula
After the Monroes move into their new house, family dog Harold begins to see changes in Bunnicula. The title vampire rabbit has become brooding, mysterious and conflicted thanks to a love triangle with a werewolf squirrel over the blandest female bunny you could ever meet. Meanwhile, the family’s new home is so overrun by thousands of warring mythological rodents that one has to wonder how the town of Forks, Washington hasn’t made the national news by this point. Then a bunch of battles or yearnings or chaste kisses or whatever happens until half the readers are bored out their freaking minds and the other half want to name their first child “Renesmee.”
Cat In The Hat
The mom of the two kids in the first book is arrested after leaving their children in the care of a fish. Meanwhile, the Cat is on the run from the authorities due to countless home invasions. His photo is featured on “Nancy Grace,” people across the country call in sightings of a cat seemingly wearing Where’s Waldo’s torso for a hat and the FBI begin to close in with enough manpower and firepower to take down two Godzillas and a Mothra. The epic chase finally concludes in the high-octane shootout Beginner Book “The Cat in the Hat Would Rather Burn Out than Fade Away,” in which terrified first-graders learn to rhyme “forgive” with “C-4 explosive.”
The Berenstain Bears
After years of dressing, acting and even talking like humans, the Berenstain Bears decide to say no to “The Man” and throw off the shackles of civilization. And so the bears quit their jobs, drop out of school and leave their many creditors behind to return to nature and become completely feral animals once more. This leads to a whole new series of children’s books with such titles as “The Berenstain Bears Root Through Garbage Cans,” “The Berenstain Bears Rub Themselves Provocatively against Some Trees” and “The Berenstain Bears Maul a Couple of Campers.”
What happened to other beloved children's characters? Let us know in the comments!
Comments
Post a Comment