"The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff (published 1982)
Benjamin Hoff's "The Tao of Pooh" (1982) is a sweet book dedicated to explaining the concepts of Taoism, an ancient Chinese philosophy, to people who don't really get it. By using A.A. Milne's character Winnie-the-Pooh, Hoff elucidates the Tao (translated into English as "the Way") as a concept that encourages the act of non-doing, or doing nothing. Rather than this resulting in failure, Hoff explains - by way of Winnie-the-Pooh anecdotes - how this will result in wisdom, if one has courage enough to really listen to their own personal intuition. Pooh, by keeping his mind empty and on simple things, seems to accidentally come up with solutions to big problems, problems that his friends, such as Wise Owl and Sad Eeyore, can't seem to come up with. Rather than collecting endless amounts of knowledge, or rather than focusing on all the ways one can be clever, Taoism guides us to see and hear and feel what's right here with us, what's right ...