Otto the Bear

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

A charmingly illustrated story tells of Otto, a bear who has long enjoyed a friendly relationship with a woodsman willing to share his apples and pears with the animals. Then the kindly old man retires and is replaced by a go-ahead family man with very different views about property rights. He wants all the fruit for himself, and he builds a stout fence around his orchard trees to protect them. Unhappy Otto, rebuffed, as he thinks, by his friend, goes off to the mountains to nurse his hurt feelings.

Then the woodsman, far afield in winter in search for firewood, is trapped by a falling tree. He is doomed — until Otto lumbers to his rescue, lifts the tree, digs the injured man out of the snow, and carries him safely home. The two become fast friends, Otto is part of the happy family circle, and the cruel fence is demolished and burnt.

Exquisite wash and torn-paper illustrations make the book a visual delight, but the story is more than a little foolish: just one more fairy tale about the cuddliness and amiability of what is in cold fact a very large and potentially extremely dangerous animal that children should be taught to regard with admiration — but with respect. And even that from a healthy distance.