Very Hairy Bear
By Alice Schertle; Matt Phelan (Illustrator)
(Harcourt Children's Books, Hardcover, 9780152165680, 32pp.)
Publication Date: September 2007
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook
Categories: Animals - Bears, Concepts - Seasons, Nature & the Natural World - General
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All through the year, this shaggy, raggy, rumbly, bumbly bear faces down whatever comes his way: bee stings and scolding squirrels, cold rushing rivers and prickly bushes. And he does it all with a spring in his step and a smile on his face. There’s just one thing he can't abide. Luckily, he knows exactly what to do about it.
Season by season, Alice Schertle and Matt Phelan lead us through a year in the life of a charming, resourceful, and quite hairy bear.
ALICE SCHERTLE is a well-known poet with many picture books to her credit, including Down the Road, illustrated by E. B. Lewis, and William and Grandpa, which won the Christopher Award. She lives in the Berkshires of Massachusetts.
MATT PHELAN is the illustrator of The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs by Betty Birney and The New Girl . . . and Me by Jacqui Robbins. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
* "Outlined in a thick, curly halo of split ends, a “boulder-big bear with shaggy, raggy, brownbear hair everywhere . . . except on his no-hair nose” bounds happily through a seasonal round in this outdoorsy gambol. Schertle’s patterned language sets up a playful cadence that Phelan captures perfectly in his soft-lined, buttery-yellow pastels. Whether splashing after salmon in spring, fearlessly sticking that no-hair nose into a bee tree in summer, lounging at purple-stained ease amid a patch of blueberry bushes or chowing down on a hoard of acorns as squirrels chatter angrily above, the portly protagonist positively radiates doggy good cheer. Until, that is, winter sets in—then it’s time for a good scratch on a rough tree trunk and a sleepy retreat to a cave where “shaggy, raggy, very hairy bearpaws” can protect that sensitive nose from the cold wind. He’s a bear of rare appeal, and it’s hard to resist the urge to snuggle down next to him." (starred review)
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