THE YOUNG GRIZZLY

by Paige Dixon ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 1974

Dixon's animals are always more believable and even interesting than his people, and here he reconstructs the first three years in the life of a grizzly bear with unusual immediacy. The grizzly and his twin sister are raised with single-minded devotion by their mother who teaches them to catch fish and find other foods, charges a jeep whose passengers are shooting her son, cares for the young one while his jaw wound heals, and then -- to the total bewilderment of her two offspring -- abandons them abruptly and roughly when her time comes to mate again. After several months the two young ones separate, each to pursue thereafter a solitary life of possibly 40 to 50 years. Always on the edge of their lives is the threat from humans with guns, especially one bloodthirsty hunter and his protesting son, whose conversations reveal a changing relationship that would be disappointingly stereotyped as a main feature but functions here to punctuate the narrative with a smoothly handled subplot, And Miller's fine line drawings are quietly expressive.

Pub Date: March 20, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1974

Categories: NONFICTION