MR. BEAR TO THE RESCUE

Gliori’s Mr. Bear books manage to be heartwarming while avoiding any saccharine aftertaste, mostly because Mr. Bear is such a hapless old beast, a bungling agent of good (No Matter What, 1999, etc.). In his latest saga, he must dive into the stormy night in aid of his woodland neighbors. The tree house that the rabbits, owls, and bees—the Rabbit-Bunns, the Hoot-Toowits, and the Buzz families—call home has gone crashing to the ground, and young Flora, of the Rabbit-Bunns, is missing. Not particularly resourceful, not particularly brave, Mr. Bear nonetheless moves out into the windy darkness, ready to do the right thing. Reaching the scene of the disaster, he gathers the shattered hive and nest and all the bedraggled creatures, including Flora, who is rescued in an act of inadvertent derring-do, and he takes them home. While Mr. Bear goes to sleep on his laurels, Mrs. Bear gets down to the unheralded task of knitting together that nest and hive. Burnished colors and an air of sweet neighborliness pervade this book, where even the wild feels like a snug place when Mr. Bear is in the picture. (Picture book. 3-6)