THE HAIRY ADVENTURES OF HARRY THE BEAR AND HIS DISGUSTING SIDEKICK STANKY THE DOG

A bear helps out a friend who has lost some fur in this picture book.

Harry the Bear is well named. Not only is he very hairy, the fur is so long and messy that he frightens his sisters, cats, and the bats outside. Harry doesn’t care; he loves his hair and his attempts to find different ways of styling it. When his best friend, Jeremy, a fellow bear, survives a house fire and winds up with patchy fur and a missing eyebrow, kids tease him about it. Despite loving his fur, Harry doesn’t hesitate to help, cutting off half and gluing it onto a jacket for his friend. Jeremy is moved by the gift—“as long as the hair didn’t come from your butt!” Told in rhyme, Hopper’s story offers an appealing blend of gross-out humor and compassion. Besides being scary, Harry’s hair is comical, as when he uses honey (appropriately) to style a rocking Mohawk. The cartoonish images by debut illustrator Leischer can be rather flat. But they do capture the book’s humor, especially in depicting the titular Stanky, who is as disgusting as advertised—eating garbage and drinking from the toilet.

An amusingly silly and gross animal tale with a warm heart.