Please Do Feed the Bears

From Publishers Weekly An enterprising bear cub gets his way at a cost then figures out how to resolve his predicament in this gently comical tale geared to preschoolers. Percy asks each of his family members if he can bring his toy bears along on their trip to the beach. Each replies, If we took your teddy, we'd have to leave something behind. So Percy does just that. At the beach, Escrivù (How Can You Dance?) uses panel paintings to convey the hero's many busy pursuits on sand and in water. When it's time for lunch, and his family discovers a cooler full of stuffed bears instead of sandwiches, Percy looks genuinely shocked. But the cub comes up with a plan: Please do feed the bears, he writes on the boardwalk, and sets up each of his stuffed animals with an empty plate and red-and-white¤checked napkin. Escrivù depicts ursine passersby who contribute everything from hotdogs to peaches. It's a clever premise, and Percy's savvy solution is tailor-made to flatter budding egos, but the execution is rather bumpy. Naylor's brisk text keeps the story moving, but she's less successful in setting a rhythmic mood with her use of recurring phrases. The initial, somewhat static illustrations of Percy's home seem out of sync with the uh-oh build-up of the plot, but Escrivù's renderings loosen up when Percy hits the beach. The understated humor pays off when the artist shows the food donors in a kind of boardwalk parade. Ages 3-7. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal reSchool-Grade 1-Percy, a young bear, wants to take his stuffed teddies with him on a trip to the beach. Family members explain that there isn't room in the car for them, and that something else would have to be left behind if they were included. Percy takes the explanation as an invitation to remove the picnic lunch to make room for his beloved toys. At the beach, after discovering the missing lunch, the family decides to go for one last swim before heading home hungry. While they are gone, Percy comes up with an idea. Setting his teddy friends in front of empty plates, he writes, "Please DO Feed the Bears" in chalk on the boardwalk. The panhandling bears have a feast before long, due to the amused kindness of passersby. Naylor has taken a common experience that children and parents can relate to and turned a simple occurrence into a delightful, well-written story of a youngster's resourcefulness to rectify a mistake. While the jacket design is inviting, the acrylic artwork is questionably simplistic. The bears lack expressive details, and some readers may find it difficult to differentiate between the "real" bears and the "stuffed" variety. The layout is eye-catching with colorful illustrations on every page, but many of the pictures are stiff, and the font doesn't seem to suit the story.