To Be And Learn

Since most of us lack the capacity to morph from one form into another, understanding other people, other animals, tends to be difficult or complicated at the very least.  Yet, we believe knowledge is key to creating empathy.  How can we eliminate fear or distrust without it?

Reading is how we build this bridge; reading closes gaps in our awareness.  We read well-researched nonfiction titles by authors who are experts in a particular subject area or who have consulted with those who are indeed professionals in their field.  We also read books like Eat Like A Bear (Henry Holt and Company) by April Pulley Sayre with illustrations by Caldecott Honor winner, Steve Jenkins. This is how we learn to enlarge our world beyond ourselves.  We become the bear.

Can you eat like a bear?
Awake in April. Find food.
But where?

After being asleep four months, having lost one-third of our weight, it's easy to understand the hunger.  First though, our thirst must be quenched; a pond, a stream or nearby river might do.  With long claws for digging, snow disappears into dirt to reveal shoots of water-loving flora or the remains of another animal who did not survive the winter.

In each of the seven months until we sleep again, our lives revolve around our ability to find something to eat.  We use our nose to smell delectable delicacies, fresh green plants or a pile of ants. If we're up to speed we might run down a stray young elk or later grazing, another bear.  Taking a bath is another opportunity to catch a fresh feast.

We dig and dig and dig some more, discovering appetizers or a midday meal.  We climb heights of broken rocks to capture groups of moths at rest.  Soon it's time to collect the harvest of fruits nature provides.

We dig and dig and dig yet again to uncover what other animals have stored.  We search and seek to find a place to sleep; a place to protect us from the winter winds and snow.  It could be we'll need room for more than ourselves; mid-winter might bring surprises.


When you mesh a childhood embracing the out-of-doors, nurturing a love of nature, with an education in biology and writing, an author such as April Pulley Sayre may appear to the benefit of her many readers.  This June when attending the American Library Association Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, in the midst of crossing the large hallway from the exhibits to the information area, I glanced at the name tag worn by a woman passing by me.  It read April Pulley Sayre.

There among all the hustle and bustle we chatted about her books.  She said she was very pleased with Eat Like A Bear.  Now, having read it multiple times, I can understand why.

Guiding us through the months spent after and before hibernation, after seeking information from those working directly with bears, she gives us the ability to walk beside a single bear.  Her poetic, rhythmic prose full of activity, encourages us to follow.  Use of recurring phrases, sometimes altering a single word, generate an easy flow.  Here is an examples.

Drink like a bear---from a stream.
Leaping trout? None about.
Bushes? Bare. No berries there. ...

Using cut-and torn-paper collage Steve Jenkins' illustrations welcome readers into the bear's life.  For this volume the bears are made with Amate, a handmade Mexican bark paper created from the bark of ficus (fig) trees.  As soon as readers see the front and back jacket and cover, they'll want to touch them. (The ants on the front cover shimmer like the tiny bodies do in the wild.)

Definitely a master of this medium, Jenkins' use of paper is astonishing in his ability to convey the intricate life-like details of each element in the pictures.  His perspectives, a close-up of the bear's head, side view, another two pages zooming in on a dandelion plant with the bear smaller in the background, two bears meeting nose-to-nose, a partial side view of their heads or the bear, neck stretched to taste huckleberries, looking from the bottom upward, will have readers believing they are participants in these monthly adventures.  My favorite illustration is of the bear seated in the meadow with the dandelions.


Author April Pulley Sayre and illustrator Steve Jenkins, have collaborated, as they did in Vulture View, to conceive an intriguing portrayal of one of nature's most commanding members in Eat Like A Bear.  This title is the whole package, a gift in words and pictures, informing and creating a link to another part of the chain we call life.  Thank you April Pulley Sayre and Steve Jenkins for this book.

To view more pages from the book follow this link to the publisher's website.  To learn more about the author and illustrator follow the links embedded in their names within this post.

She's One Feisty Bundle of Fur

Rarely do I see squirrels scampering across either the front or back yard of my home.  They prefer to stay among the tops of the trees, but I know they've been busy.  This spring I had multiple, more than ever, small hickory trees growing everywhere, sprouting from purposefully planted nuts.  I'm pretty sure there isn't even a hickory tree in the entire neighborhood!

The other morning, when working in the large back garden, before the sun came up, a fierce chattering started and continued for nearly an hour.  Whenever you hear excited squirrel speak, you know trouble is afoot.  David Ezra Stein has cleverly caught, with boundless humor, the persistence, protective passion of a fearless parent in Ol' Mama Squirrel (Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.).


Ol' Mama Squirrel had raised many babies. 

With all this experience comes wisdom.  Deep in her heart she knows baby squirrel is a delicacy for more than one critter. But woe unto anyone or anything that comes near her little ones.

At the slightest encroachment near her happy hole you can hear---

"Chook, chook, chook! 

Cats, owls, and dogs are no match for her ferociousness.  In fact, the panicked pooch thinks she's a nut case.

She does not limit her endeavors to the living either.  A wayward kite and the latest flight between airports passing overhead receive her most verbal contempt.  One day though, an intruder challenges Ol' Mama Squirrel.

Her normal antics for striking fear in the hearts of her adversaries is not working on this wayward grizzly bear.  Pitching old nuts at him elicits laughter from this menace.  There's only one thing left for Ol' Mama Squirrel to do...and she does it well.


When you visit David Ezra Stein's website, it says:

Funny, With Love

which is the essence of all his books.  In this title the tone generated by his word choices of Ol' Mama Squirrel is laid-back country.  Readers can't help but feel a kinship with and an appreciation for her bravery and determination.  Stein's use of repetitive phrases when danger approaches (and leaves) are an open invitation for participation.


While the matching jacket and cover on the front show a contented familial moment, the back names the three babies sitting in a row on a branch with the fist shaking Mama below shouting out her word challenges.  Light lime green opening and closing endpapers usher us into the leafy realm of the squirrels' world.  The title page zooms in on Mama and her chargers inside the hole with an acorn between oak leaves beneath.  The verso and first page give a more wide angle view of the tree within the surrounding city, cracked and broken acorns in the far left corner.

This is the description of how the illustrations were rendered as read on the verso.

The black lines in "Ol' Mama Squirrel" were created with a pencil dipped into ink.  The lines were copied onto Strathmore Aquarius II watercolor paper, and watercolor and crayon were added.  No squirrels were harmed in the making of this book.

There is much to love about the layout of this book; liberal use of white space to frame characters and action, items in a picture bleeding out the loosely drawn frames, small circular insets for emphasis, close-ups to intensify focus, and double page spreads to enhance a moment.  Mama with her arm and paw motions, grumpy looks and open-mouthed tirades is guaranteed to induce outbursts of laughter.  I think one of my favorite illustrations in the book is Mama charging full-speed ahead through the tree branches with two of the babies clinging to her back while the third rides behind her ears using them like reins.  You should see the look on her face.


Ol' Mama Squirrel written and illustrated by Caldecott Honor winning David Ezra Stein is a peek at the lengths one mother goes to protect her children told with insight and laden with the fun he loves.  Readers and listeners alike will be repeating the refrains as she frightens away each and every foe.  She's a hero in any world.

To access David Ezra Stein's website follow the link embedded in his name.  This is a link to a recently published article Not On My Watch! he authored.  This is an interview about this title at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast with lots of artwork.  Did you know he had the completed book turned in at his publisher's but asked to do it all over?  Get that story and more from his interview at Pen &Oink.