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"And so when I found out I was pregnant a few years ago, I basically had this nine month kind of deadline to take my first crack at writing a picture book.” Book Excerpt: Finding Winnieīy Lindsay Mattick with illustrations by Sophie Blackall

“At some point, I knew I was going to have a child and I thought, there was no better way to explain to them this amazing family story than to do it as a picture book," Mattick tells Here & Now's Robin Young. And as readers find out in Canadian author Lindsay Mattick's new picture book " Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear," there really was a Christopher Robin too! Mattick, it turns out, is the great grand-daughter of that Canadian veterinarian and knew her family's story needed to be told. That real-life bear, represented in statues in London and Winnipeg, as well as in historical photos and documents, is the one now known as Winnie the Pooh. He brought her to the London Zoo, which agreed to care for Winnie for the duration of the war.

But when the time came to deploy to France, he realized that Winnie would not be safe. The bear stayed with him, becoming a regiment mascot, through months of battlefield training in miserable weather. He named the bear Winnie, after his native Winnipeg, and continued to the east coast of Canada, where he boarded a ship - with Winnie and his new regiment - to England. Against his better judgement, the vet bought the bear for $20 and re-boarded the train. Actually, it was a bear cub tied to a string, held by a trapper. In 1914, a Canadian veterinarian on his way to treat World War I battlefield horses got off his train on a platform in White River, Ontario, and saw a bear cub. (Courtesy Mattick Family) This article is more than 7 years old. Winnie the real bear pictured with the Canadian regiment training in England.