When I was little I'd checked this book out of the library so many times my mom eventually bought me my own copy. I loved it so much, in fact, that I learned to read on this book! The games the kids play may be not socially acceptable anymore (cowboys & indians, cops & robbers), but they accurately capture the era in which the book was written and certainly pale compared to the book's payoff. A must-have!

This book is wonderful. The illustrations are beautiful and the poetry is a perfect bedtime book. This book has a different poem that is well known on each page and the pictures are the cutest we have seen. This book is the best!!

My 4 year old and I picked this book up at the library today, and what a gem! The illustrations are so high quality, and the story is just right for a small child. Nothing too scary or corny. It's obviously a good bedtime book, but I think it's a great anytime book!

I picked up a copy of Lynn Schooler's book after skimming over the back cover, where the words "Alaska", "outdoors" and "Michio Hoshino" grabbed my attention. As a working photographer who grew up in Alaska (my present location is in Maine) I didn't hesitate to buy this book on the spot, even though I had never heard of it. I'm glad I bought it, for this is one of the best books I've read in awhile on ANY subject, and I do read a lot.

Yes, the book is about living Alaska, communing with nature, and wildlife photography, all of which interest me a great deal. But "The Blue Bear" is about a great deal more than that, touching on themes of friendship and heartbreaking loss, grieving and healing, insecurity and inspiration, hard work and personal reward...in short, an exceptional story of a man trying to find his way in the world and to understand his place in it. It is so well written and vividly presented that it goes beyond merely making you feel as though you were there; I think Lynn Schooler's gift (one of many, apparently) is making people feel almost as if they have met the people he writes about, visited the places he describes, and experienced along with him some of the joy and awe of nature, as well as the periods of pain, loneliness and isolation he so openly discusses in a quietly melancholic way.

The book is an interesting mixture of all of those aforementioned elements, sprinkled with interesting forays in Alaskan biology, history, culture, oceanography, the ups and downs of running a guide service, and the challenges, rewards, and hardships inherent with living in a place like Alaska. "The Blue Bear" is a book that defies categorization in many ways because it seems to be about so many different things, but Lynn Schooler writes with a clarity and depth of perspective which prevents the book from seeming trivial or glossed over. Some people are not patient with books which plunge into a section or chapter that may or may not relate directly to the underlying narrative thread. I for one do not mind these "offshoot branches" in books, so long as they hold my interest, as is the case with this book. A casual reader might think for a moment that Schooler is merely grandstanding and showing off his vast knowledge of his subjects, flexing his outdoor experience and intellect....but look just a bit deeper.... it becomes readily apparent that this is a writer who is unafraid of questioning himself or freely admitting that he is not always correct, who openly acknowledges and discusses his own faults (and we all have them) in a candid and refreshing way.

Reading this book also made me wish that I had the opportunity to meet Michio Hoshino, the late wildlife photographer whose work is respected worldwide. This is another testament to Lynn Schooler's writing. In all probability, my trails may have intersected with Michio's at different times during my years in Fairbanks while attending UAF and working on photography symposiums as a volunteer, but sadly, I never had the chance to meet the man whose work I admire very much, and worse yet, I never will. Here again, Lynn Schooler succeeds in relating his personal accounts and anecdotes of his time spent with Michio, a man who seemingly befriended just about everyone he ever met while bringing out the best in people and setting an inspiring example of living life to the fullest.

If you are even remotely interested in any of the topics or issues I have touched upon in this review, don't hesitate to buy a copy of this book. I'm betting that something in "The Blue Bear" will stay with you long after you have finished reading it.

Blue Bear's Race is one of my 3 1/2 year-old's favorite stories. We've been reading it for a year. She enjoys the excitement as the bears fly in the air and land on their respective hat and nose, resulting in a trip to a hospital. You'll find child-pleasing tidbits like "Put out that cigarette!" and the surgeon's cold paws. The artwork is as clever as the story-telling, drawn at imaginative angles such as a view over a car passing in the rain through the window at the two bears arguing inside. A pleasure for the parent, too, with its wry humor. I think of the first part as a story of consequences for irresponsible behavior, and the second part as a "prodigal son" type story as the bear friends and bear medical people nurse the injured bears back to health. I also liked the opportunity to give her a child's-eye view of a hospital and its workings.

Children learn to take only what they need when Bessie picks all the blueberries and forgets to leave some for the bears. The bears take matters into their own paws and eat all the blueberries in Bessie's cabin. Bessie gets a bit of a scare and a big blue mess. The illustrations are delightful and the reading is fun.

Maurice Pledger's works are all great. The illustrations are beautifully done. Pledger uses a strong vocabulary which I have found helpful in stregthening the vocabulary of children.

Here finally is the neurological basis for the weirdly persistent, highly distressing, ever-cycling symptoms of posttraumatic stress. Don't let the medical terminology stop you from reading this book. It's a stunning revelation to see how physiologically based this syndrome really is, rooted as it is in the survival imperative of the freeze response and it's cognitive partner, dissociation. Makes those diagnostic categories which most of us therapists got trained on pretty irrelevant! I leaned heavily on the fabulous info in this book to write my own chapter on the physiology of PTSD. It's a must read for people with PTSD, their family, friends and counselors.

A young boy and his stuffed bear travel in a cardboard box to a strange planet. Can they escape the dangers of the alien planet and find their way home? A cute book for very young pre-readers, 'The Box' is a true picture book: no words at all. But the absence of words can help young kids make up their own words to go with the pictures. A nice book.

Having just completed a wonderful exploration of Elizabethan England, and as a lover of animals, I was intrigued by the combination of these two themes in this book. The characters, human and bear, are unforgettable. The scenes of mistreatment are haunting, especially since they are based on fact. As a school librarian, I would recommend this book to kids older than 5th grade who want a gripping adventure that shows what it was REALLY like in Shakespeare's England. But beware--the powerful depiction of callousness and savagery is NOT for everyone. This book will stay with you long after you have read it.