The Hundred Acre Wood
Passport: Winnie-the-Pooh stories
Creator: A. A. Milne
E. H. Shepard’s map of the Hundred Acre Wood, based on the Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A. A. Milne.
The Hundred Acre Wood is the forest in which Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends live. So, naturally, most of the stories take place here. Though the exact location is not known, it is inspired by Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England. The other features of the Hundred Acre Wood and its inhabitants are completely fictional.
At the centre of the Wood is Owl’s house. Around it are the places familiar to those who’ve read the books: the houses of Pooh Bear, Kanga, Rabbit and Piglet; Christopher Robin’s House; The Sandy Pit Where Roo Plays; The Bee Tree; The Way to the North Pole; An area for Rabbit’s Friends-and-Relations; The Six Pine Trees; Where the Woozle Wasn’t; A Floody Place and Eeyore’s Gloomy Place.
Earlier, only the areas surrounding Owl’s house were referred to as The Hundred Acre Wood. The other characters resided outside of it. Over time, it has come to refer to the entire forest where the stories take place.
*****
NarniaWorld
Passport : The Chronicles of Narnia.
Creator: C.S. Lewis
1972 Map of Narnia by Pauline Baynes.
Narnia is a mystical world that can be accessed anywhere from our planet at an unexpected time. Though one sure way to get there is from the Wood Between the Worlds.
Created by Aslan the Great Lion who is also its guardian, with the help of a few people, the World is shaped like a flat disc, with the sky forming a dome covering it. Outside the dome lies the mysterious land, Aslan’s Country.
Its inhabitants include talking animals and mythical beasts, and magic is a common feature. People (mostly children) from Earth are regularly sent here on missions by Aslan to save Narnian society from destruction.
The World consists the major country of Narnia, besides other nations and geographic features — Archenland, Calormen, the Conglomeration of Nations, Ettinsmoor, the Great Desert, the Unnamed Tundra, the Unknown Land, the Southern Waste, Telmar, the Western Wild, the Wild Lands of the North and the Witch Country.
*****
Middle-earth
Passport : The Lord of the Rings series
Creator: J.R.R. Tolkien
Map of Middle-earth.
Imagine Earth several thousand year ago — all continents combined into one big land mass, inhabited by Men, Elves, Dwarves, Ents, Hobbits, Dragons, Trolls, and Orcs. That’s Middle-earth, the land where the famous fictional saga takes place.
Middle-earth is the main continent of Arda, what we now call Earth. In this completely imaginary period of our planet’s evolutionary history, Arda starts off as a flat disc created by Eru Ilúvatar, the supreme deity of Arda. With large-scale natural interventions spurred by the deity and His subordinates the Valar, Arda constantly changes form to become the planet we live in today.
Middle-earth is flanked by Aman in the West separated by the Belegaer Ocean, and the Land of the Sun on the East separated by the East Sea.
The plot of Lord of the Rings almost entirely takes place on Middle-earth, which has detailed and specific geographic features like mountain rages, rivers, planes, kingdoms and shires.
Six thousand years later, why aren’t elves and trolls roaming the Earth? Blame it on evolution.
*****
Land of Oz
Passport : The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Creator: L. Frank Baum
L. Frank Baum (illustrated by John R. Neill) as it appeared in Tik-Tok of Oz in 1914.
Farm girl Dorothy Gale and her dog Toto are swept away by a cyclone to the magical Land of Oz. Like the others, this one too was born out of the writer’s imagination.
As described in the books, Oz is an almost rectangular land dived diagonally into four countries: Munchkin Country in the East, Winkie Country in the West, Gillikin Country in the North, and Quadling Country in the South. Being a kooky land, it isn’t surprising that the West and East are interchanged in the map.
At the intersection of the diagonals is the Emerald City, capital of the land of Oz and home to the monarch of Oz, Princess Ozma. The inhabitants of Oz, or Ozians, include fantastical creatures like Fairies, Mermaid, Fighting Trees, Ryls, Knooks, Gigans, Rampsies, Hammer-Heads and the porcelain people.
The Land of Oz exists as part of our real world, but cannot be accessed by regular people. It is surrounded on all four sides by a desert that acts as a natural barrier. Glinda, the most powerful sorceress in the land of Oz, has further tightened security by creating a barrier of invisibility around the Land of Oz.
