One Bear Extraordinare

PreS-Gr 2—Bear is a "rambling musician" and composer who plays triangle, tambourine, xylophone, drums, harmonica, trumpet, and cowbell, but mostly guitar. Dressed in jeans and a red and white cap and carrying instruments and camping gear on his back, Bear meets a succession of other pants-wearing woodland animal musicians. Each of them adds something to Bear's unfinished song, except Wolf Pup, who fails at every instrument he tries. When the moon rises, however, Wolf Pup adds his voice, the very sound Bear had been missing all along. The story is a musically inflected version of the reams of picture books about finding one's individual gifts; the art is the real star here. Collage, drawing, and three-dimensional layered cut-paper illustrations photographed by the author-illustrator will reward close looking. The bright-eyed animals and their exquisite paper accessories (from buttons to s'mores) have a dollhouse charm.