THE BEAR AND THE FLY

by Paula Winter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 15, 1976

It's the familiar domesticity of the dinner table scene--father bear in shirtsleeves, mother in flowered dress and rubber thong sandals, little bear in pink pants and loose overblouse, and the family dog looking on longingly from the floor--that wins your sympathetic interest on Winter's first, finely sketched page, and makes the shambles she pictures at the end so disastrous. The destruction ensues when a fly buzzes in through an open window and father bear pursues him single-mindedly with a swatter. By the time that the fly buzzes nonchalantly back out the way it came in, father has overturned the wine bottle and broken a glass, pulled the fringed tablecloth onto the floor, cracked the TV, overturned the potted plants, and knocked out his wife, child, pet and finally, as he falls from a chair he has stacked on the table to reach the high flying pest, himself. There's a desmaying development on every page. . . in one of the more engaging, less ostentatiously clever of the recent wordless adventures.

Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1976

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1976

Categories: CHILDREN'S