(++++) GRIN AND BEAR IT

A Book for Bear. By Ellen L. Ramsey. Illustrated by MacKenzie Haley. Flamingo Books. $18.99.

Baby Bear Comes Back. By Merrie Spaeth. Illustrated by Hatice Bayramoglu. Adriel Publishing. $14.99.

     Adorably conceived, delightfully packaged, and featuring a very surprising “meta” element to add extra spice to its conclusion, Ellen L. Ramsey’s A Book for Bear is for book lovers, bear lovers, book-and-bear lovers, and families in which you are never too young to take a somewhat convoluted fantasy journey into reading. The plot seems simple enough: a little girl named Ellen (yes, the same name the book’s author has) loves reading, and a bear called Bear, with whom Ellen happens to be friends, loves listening as Ellen reads out loud. Bear’s reactions to the various types of books Ellen reads – scary ones, exciting ones, funny ones – are among the delights of MacKenzie Haley’s illustrations. Bear likes books so much that he decides he wants one of his very own. So Ellen promises to bring one from school – but Bear wants to choose it himself, in part to be sure it is “the color of ripe red raspberries.” Well, bears are not allowed in school, so the friends come up with a disguise that will let Bear sneak in unobtrusively, assuming that a huge, furry, cape-wearing superhero is unobtrusive. Well…not so much. The teacher screams, Bear has to run away, and he and Ellen have to try something else – such as a trip to the library, into which Ellen walks while a large blueberry bush saunters in behind her. The librarian shrieks, Bear and Ellen run away, and now what? Bear thinks maybe he just needs a different disguise – one to use when going to a bookstore – so Ellen helps turn him into “a furry giant, wearing a coat and hat and carrying an umbrella” (Haley’s art is just wonderful on the bear-in-disguise pages). Unfortunately, once again someone yells upon seeing Bear, and the friends must leave empty-handed. Now what? Perfect answer: Bear and Ellen make a book for Bear, with Ellen writing it and the two of them drawing pictures for it. It is called – here comes the self-referential material – A Book for Bear, and sure enough, it has a cover the color of ripe red raspberries. So all that remains is for Ellen to read the book to Bear – and she starts with its very first sentence, “Bear loved books,” which just happens to be the very first sentence of A Book for Bear as written by Ellen L. Ramsey. And as if all that is not “meta” enough, kids can remove the wraparound cover of Ramsey’s book to reveal that the very book they have been reading looks exactly like the book that in-the-book Ellen is reading to Bear – same front cover, same back cover, same ripe-red-raspberry color. This is a marvelous twist that pulls real-world readers firmly into the fantasy world of Ellen and Bear, creating a participatory story that is delightful in every way and full of all sorts of surprises that will hopefully turn young readers into book lovers just as devoted as Ellen and Bear are. The cleverness here is so engaging that adults and kids alike will have a great time re-reading the book even after they know how things turn out – it is all just too much fun to stop reading it after a single experience.

     Really good books stand up to multiple readings and can even span multiple generations – and really loved toys can have multiple lives, too. Fans of the Toy Story films, especially Toy Story 3, are well aware of the importance of once-loved objects being loved again under different but equally meaningful circumstances. This applies to plush bears as well as plastic toys, and certainly to the title character in Merrie Spaeth’s Baby Bear Comes Back. This is an easy-to-read chapter book rather than a picture book – although the chapter-opening illustrations by Hatice Bayramoglu add to the charm of the story. The book is the tale of a “small, light brown bear with black eyes, a round black nose, and a cream colored bow around his neck,” and a device that makes the sound of a heartbeat – just the thing to comfort a newborn, which is what Baby Bear does when Boy comes home from the hospital, two days old. Although Baby Bear has experiences that Spaeth describes him experiencing and reacting to, he is a plush toy, not a fully anthropomorphic character. Spaeth quickly integrates him into the family’s life in a way that makes him special (“Boy loved him best”) and also shows the passage of time. This “things change” element is subtle at first, when repeated washings mean that Baby Bear’s eyes start “to show little white spots where paint chipped away,” and then becomes an ongoing theme as Boy grows and has experiences of all sorts. For example, there is an adventure at a wedding, when for a time Boy is “desperately afraid that his lifetime companion was gone.” Later, as Boy gets older, various stuffed animals are put on shelves or given away – and Baby Bear ends up on a shelf too, and is now silent, the heartbeat-noise device no longer working. Things continue to change; the family changes; there is a move to a new house; and eventually Baby Bear, long kept in a box, is taken out one day and discovers that Boy is now Very Big. In fact, Boy is now being called Father, and he has taken Baby Bear out of the box to put him “next to the moving, sound-making something” that is soon identified as Girl. Yes, Baby Bear has been passed on to a new generation, and Girl (who is named Martha) takes to him just as Boy did. Baby Bear is now somewhat the worse for wear – although “he still had welcoming arms, two black eyes and a black nose.” But then – oh no! – one of the family dogs gets too playful with Baby Bear, and suddenly his nose is gone, even though he “didn’t feel any different.” Well, no matter: Martha still loves him, and everything will be great forever. Except – well, Spaeth has already established that things change, families change, time makes life different, and even things that retain their wonderfulness (such as Baby Bear) cannot be quite the same forever. So the story ends cleverly and questioningly, with a slightly bittersweet tinge, as Baby Bear and Martha look lovingly at each other “for now.” At the back of the book, Spaeth helpfully provides ways for teachers or parents to use the tale as a jumping-off point for discussions of some weighty topics that the plot itself touches on but, luckily for young readers’ enjoyment, does not explore in depth. So kids can return to the book, on their own or with adult guidance, to think about some of what happens in it from a new, expanded perspective. Thus, after children first read Baby Bear Comes Back, the book has its own way to “come back” in somewhat different form – just like Baby Bear himself.