Hairs on Bears

Laurence Steven is a professor of English at Laurentian University and
the author of Dissociation and Wholeness in Patrick White’s Fiction.

Normand Cousineau’s bright, off-kilter, primary-colored ink drawings
add a distinctiveness to this Annick book that Ryan-Lush’s nonsense
verse (in the tradition of Seuss, Dennis Lee, and sean ohuigin)
wouldn’t alone provide. The poetry seems stretched: on the one hand,
it tries too hard to be funny, on the other, it ekes itself out to fill
the imposed form. Here are some representative lines: “This vacuum
cleaner, / it’s too small / We need a bigger one, / that’s all /
This big thing here / should do the trick / It’s grabbing up / those
hairs—real quick.”

The inside covers feature a board game where one proceeds around the
track by avoiding or getting caught up in dog hairs. Recommended.