Philip Bear Sings

Kelly L. Green is editor of the Canadian Book Review Annual’s
Children’s Literature edition.

Philip Bear is off to the city to hear lots of different kinds of
music—rock and roll, opera, and choral singing. Philip loves music and
he loves to sing, but while in the city he becomes envious of the
wonderful singers who, he believes, sing better than he ever could. When
he returns home, he refuses to go to choir practice, and stays home,
depressed, until his friends convince him to come back. Once he starts
to sing again he discovers that his trip to the city has helped him find
his own best voice.

This is a rather clever story about a child coming to terms with envy,
and moving beyond his envy to enjoy an activity for its own sake rather
than for the accolades it might bring. It is marred, however, by
uninteresting, careless writing, cheap book design (with dot-matrix
type), and unintentionally hilarious pictures. The bears often resemble
monkeys, and Philip’s mother is positively the ugliest bear I have
ever seen. Not a first-choice purchase.