The thoughtful and ever polite, marmalade sandwich and cocoa loving, immigrant from darkest Peru Paddington Bear celebrates his 50th birthday today!
Created by Michael Bond, who first found the small lonely bear on Christmas Eve with a tag attached “Please look after this bear,” recalls Paddington Bear’s very beginning,
“I bought a small toy bear on Christmas Eve 1956. I saw it left on a shelf in a London store and felt sorry for it. I took it home as a present for my wife Brenda and named it Paddington as we were living near Paddington Station at the time. I wrote some stories about the bear, more for fun than with the idea of having them published. After ten days I found that I had a book on my hands. It wasn’t written specifically for children, but I think I put into it the kind things I liked reading about when I was young.”
The first Paddington Bear book was published October 13, 1958. The Paddington Bear books have sold more than 35 million copies worldwide and translated into over 40 languages. Bond explains why Paddington Bear has been the beloved bear all these years.
“The great advantage of having a bear as a central character is that he can combine the innocence of a child with the sophistication of an adult. He gets involved in everyday situations. He has a strong sense of right and wrong and doesn’t take kindly to the red tape bureaucracy of the sillier rules and regulations with which we humans surround ourselves. As a bear he gets away with things. Paddington is humanized, but he couldn’t possibly be ‘human’. It just wouldn’t work.”