BEAR NEEDS HELP

Even apex predators need help with
their shoes sometimes.

Brannen plays a sly joke with readers’
expectations. Wandering over broad, flat Arctic scenes, a polar bear in four
red sneakers, one untied, gingerly approaches in turn a herd of seals, a drove
of Arctic hares, and a colony of lemmings. Understandably, all flee in panic
before the bear can get out much more than “Excuse me….” On the other hand, the
situation is evidently familiar to two ptarmigans who waddle up. “Shoelaces
again?” “Yup.” The birds bend down—but rather than retie the loose shoe, they
untie the other three. Off gambols the barefoot bear: “Thank you!” “He really
needs to learn to do that himself,” remarks one. The author tells the tale in
dialogue so spare that several spreads remain wordless, brushing a sometimes-deceptive
sense of serenity over events by filling skies, seas, ice fields, and the big,
simply drawn animal figures with subtle flushes of transparent color.
Expressions are comically anthropomorphic throughout. Leaving audiences the
option to read the story as metaphorical or as just a comically surreal
episode, she not only makes no effort to explain the shoes, but actually trots
in a likewise-shod second bear at the end. (Go figure: Maybe there was a sale.)

Laced with humor and, despite its
minimalistic air, decipherable in more ways than one. (Picture book. 5-8)