[4] Additionally, Burgess has colored and adapted the newer editions of various classic children's books that were drawn by the late E. H. Shepard[5] and Peggy Fortnum.

He currently lives in Taunton, Somerset[13] and is married to Malawi-born artist Rosemary Benson, who is his senior by 9 years[14][15] and who also attended the Slade School of Art from 1977 to 1979.

However, since Curless died before its completion, Burgess finished the job such "that most readers would be hard-pressed to identify which artist did which pictures", according to Lauren P. Gattilia for Education World.

"[20] Jana Siciliano of Kidsreads.com, wrote:[21] "...illustrator Mark Burgess has studied the pen-and-ink-and-watercolor elegance of Ernest H. Shepard's original illustrations and created a beautiful book filled with iconic images rendered in such exacting fashion that one, for a moment, questions whether or not they are lost Shepard masterpieces (a two-page spread with all the characters playing cricket towards the end is worthy of framing).

"However, Susan Perren, children's book columnist of The Globe and Mail, had reservations on the drawings found in Return to the Hundred Acre Wood.

Perren wrote, "This bad-tempered donkey might say, too, that Mark Burgess, as good an illustrator as he might be, is no Ernest Shepherd, and anyway, where are all those lovely line drawings we enjoyed so much in the original?