BEAR CAN DANCE!
From the Goose and Bear series
by Suzanne Bloom ; illustrated by Suzanne Bloom
The splendid friends boogie down.
Hearing Bear’s wish to fly—“So I could swoop and glide / and feel the wind in my fur”—hyperactive Fox rushes into view with a cape and goggles. But spinning about to Fox’s instructions only leaves Bear feeling woozy. Fox’s next idea involves a sled ride...which also doesn’t end well. What to do? A portable record player (younger readers may need a bit of parental explanation here) turns out to be all Bear really needs to “swoop and glide”: “It’s like flying, but with your / feet on the ground. Mostly.” Both at the start and later on, big, fantastically shaggy Bear really cuts the rug in Bloom’s elementally simple pastels, demonstrating solo dance moves and poses that Dancing with the Stars entrants can only dream of and finally sweeping Goose and Fox up in a delirious collective whirl. Abrupt transitions from indoor dancing to outdoor sledding and back, plus jacket flaps that partially obscure the charming figures on the endpapers, are distracting but minor hitches in a joyful invitation to move to the music, any music.
Bear in particular takes a star turn in the loving trio’s latest welcome outing.
(Picture book. 5-7)