A Houston-based law enforcement publicity firm is drawing controversy for its decision to send every young student in the Dallas area home from school with an off-brand Winnie-the-Pooh book about school shootings, specifically detailing the "Run, Hide, Fight" method of dealing with school shooters.

The book, clearly aimed at a young audience, is titled Stay Safe, and its subtitle is “If there is danger, let Winnie-the-Pooh and his Crew show you what to do: Run Hide Fight.” The reaction to the book from both parents and politicians has generally been one of shock and ire over the book's contents.

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Parents and politicians react to the book

An anonymous teacher from a Dallas elementary school reflected her dismay about the book to The Guardian, noting “I found it extremely disturbing, and was very uncomfortable with the whole contents of the book." She also added that the content was particularly disturbing considering Texas has not passed any new, stricter gun laws since the mass shooting last year at an elementary school in Uvalde left 19 children and two teachers murdered, “The fact that people think it’s a better idea to put out this book to a child rather than actually take any actions to stop shootings from happening in our schools, that really bothers me. It makes me feel so angry, so disappointed. It’s a year since Uvalde, and nothing has been done other than this book. That is putting it on the kids.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom shared his disgust at the book on social media, “Winnie-the-Pooh is now teaching Texas kids about active shooters because the elected officials do not have the courage to keep our kids safe and pass common sense gun safety laws,”

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Is Disney involved in this book at all?

The Walt Disney Company is not involved in the book at all, as Winnie-the-Pooh has been in the public domain since early 2022. This is why there have been a number of off-brand adaptations of Winnie-the-Pooh in decidedly non-Disney style genres, like a recent Winnie-the-Pooh horror film. The trick is that the only version nf of Winnie-the-Pooh that is in the public domain is specifically the original versions by writer AA Milne and illustrator EH Shepard, so you can't have Winnie-the-Pooh or any of his friends depicted like their Disney designs.

And sure enough, the original version of the characters are what the book uses to tell kids to "stay safe" from school shooters...

Pages from a Stay Safe book starring Winnie-the-Pooh

The book explains the "Run, Hide, Fight" method of dealing with school shooters using the classic Milne characters, like “If it is safe to get away, we should RUN like Rabbit instead of stay … If danger is near, do not fear, HIDE like Pooh does until the police appear" (Pooh is shown hiding in a pot of honey). Then the next page shows Kanga and baby Roo wearing boxing gloves, with the text “If danger finds us, don’t stay, run away. If we can’t get away, we have to FIGHT with all our might.”

Source: The Guardian