Bear Despair (Stories Without Words)
What’s the real lesson here? Don’t ever take a bear’s teddy bear. He is not going to react well. In this wordless picture book, part of the Stories without Words series, a wily fox snatches a sleeping bear’s purple stuffed toy. Fox is oh so cavalier, tossing the teddy in the air—and so Bear eats the fox. Before the bear can grab the woefully discarded plush, a lion comes along and snatches it up, so it’s bye-bye Lion, and he is swallowed whole. And that’s how it goes, as one animal after the next lands inside the bear’s stomach (which kids get to see in humorous cross-sections). Eventually, once a comrade returns the teddy, the bear, who has grown larger and larger with each consumed animal, essentially hacks everyone up from his belly. Dorémus’ crosshatched illustrations express emotion beautifully, and the story is well paced as a series of varyingly sized vignettes on white pages, much like a storyboard. It’s all pretty funny, and kids may relate to Bear’s primal rage. Preschool-Grade 2. --Ann Kelley