Pop-ups, Projections, and Poohsticks: The Remediation of Pooh’s Woodland Game
Presenter Bio
Dr Jodie Coates recently completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge, specialising in children’s literature, media, and culture. Her PhD thesis, 'Oh, What a Novelty! The Paradoxical Pop-Up Book', investigates how, and to what end, the pop-up book has been re-imagined by creatives across non-book media (film, animation, theatre, toys, advertisements, virtual reality, museums). Her research has been published in The Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics, The Journal of Interactive Books, and Adaptation.
Session
Adaptation Studies
Start Date
12-7-2026 11:00 AM
End Date
12-7-2026 12:15 PM
Abstract
In Chapter Six of 'The House at Pooh Corner' (1928), Pooh accidentally invents a new game down by the river: Poohsticks. It is a simple game, and one that can easily be replicated in real-life. One only needs to find a bridge, a bubbling stream, and a couple of sticks to start a race. Yet, it is also possible to physically play Poohsticks without ever leaving the dimensions of the paper-and-ink book. Over the decades, several pop up book artists, or ‘paper engineers’, have used different strategies to ‘remediate’, or reimagine, Milne’s fictional Poohsticks sequence as animated paper architecture. By comparing different Poohsticks pop-up dioramas (Balmer and Seminario, 1992; Mochlinska, 1999; Finch, 2003; Young, 2006), I explore how movable-paper adaptations can capture fundamental features of the iconic game. I conclude with an analysis of Tom Piper’s immersive Pooh-themed installation at the Oxford Story Museum. With the aesthetics of the pop-up book transformed into a built environment, I demonstrate how materialities collide to re-calibrate Pooh’s woodland game for a transliterate young audience.
Pop-ups, Projections, and Poohsticks: The Remediation of Pooh’s Woodland Game
In Chapter Six of 'The House at Pooh Corner' (1928), Pooh accidentally invents a new game down by the river: Poohsticks. It is a simple game, and one that can easily be replicated in real-life. One only needs to find a bridge, a bubbling stream, and a couple of sticks to start a race. Yet, it is also possible to physically play Poohsticks without ever leaving the dimensions of the paper-and-ink book. Over the decades, several pop up book artists, or ‘paper engineers’, have used different strategies to ‘remediate’, or reimagine, Milne’s fictional Poohsticks sequence as animated paper architecture. By comparing different Poohsticks pop-up dioramas (Balmer and Seminario, 1992; Mochlinska, 1999; Finch, 2003; Young, 2006), I explore how movable-paper adaptations can capture fundamental features of the iconic game. I conclude with an analysis of Tom Piper’s immersive Pooh-themed installation at the Oxford Story Museum. With the aesthetics of the pop-up book transformed into a built environment, I demonstrate how materialities collide to re-calibrate Pooh’s woodland game for a transliterate young audience.