You're a Bear Book

You’re a gruff bear with fleas. A grump with a hump between your shoulders.

So begins Mavis Jukes’s playful story of a young girl who wanders the house, imagining herself as a bear with lots to do: sniff for owl in the skies, go for a dip, and finally lumber to a hidden lair for slumber.

Gorgeously illustrated by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher, this is a sublime picture book about imagination with lush language that begs to be read aloud.

Susan Schott Karr - Children's Literature

Paw tracks leading in a left-to-right progression across the inside cover invite the young reader into this book and then into the imagination of the main character. She is a young Asian girl of the same age as her audience, and she is busy roaming around her house under a blanket and in the guise of a bear. As her bedtime approaches, the girl as a bear gets tired and heads for bed. It is there, as the story closes, that she settles in with a stuffed bear and heads off to dream of all things bear. It's obvious that the author has done her homework; we do indeed learn about a bear's habits and habitat. Some of the rhyming is a stretch—"a nose as cold as cheese" to rhyme with "midnight breeze," but that should be no matter to a young listener or reader who is captivated by the breadth of the girl's secret world and grand sense of how to entertain oneself. 2003, Capstone Press, Ages 4 to 8.