BOOK REVIEW: A Bear Named Trouble

TITLE: A Bear Named Trouble
AUTHOR: Marion Dane Bauer
PUBLISHER: Clarion Books
DATE OF PUBLICATION: June 27, 2005
FORMAT: Hardcover, 128 pages
GENRE: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 978-0618517381

SYNOPSIS FROM GOODREADS:

Ten-year-old Jonathan practically lives at the Anchorage Zoo, where his father is a keeper. He loves animals, and even imagines himself inside their bodies, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel.

Meanwhile, a young brown bear is wandering through the woods near Anchorage, alone and hungry. One night, while searching for food, the bear crosses paths with Jonathan, who eagerly follows him onto the zoo grounds.

But when the bear accidentally kills Mama Goose, Jonathan’s favorite zoo creature, the boy loses the empathy he had felt earlier. He wishes that the bear—now nicknamed Trouble—would meet the same fate as his beloved goose, and he impulsively takes steps to make sure that happens.

Based on an actual incident, and told in alternating chapters from the bear’s and Jonathan’s points of view, this is both an involving animal story and a thought-provoking investigation into the consequences of one’s actions.

MY REVIEW:

I read this book aloud to my daughters.

Overall, we enjoyed the book. My girls love anything and everything to do with animals, so I knew they would.

There were some strange parts of the book where Jonathan and his sister play a game where they try to imagine themselves inside the animals becoming what they see and feel. The parts of the book written where he is "inside" the animals is just weird, though. I am all for creativity and imagination, and that is not what I have a problem with; it is just the way that Bauer wrote those passages that just seems "weird" to me.

We have read other Bauer books that we have enjoyed more.

MY RATING: 3 stars!

This book qualifies as:
#24 for my 2011 100+ Reading Challenge