Bare Bear

From School Library Journal

PreS–A clever premise is marred by too-strict adherence to rhyming structure in this otherwise fun picture book. Busby Bear wakes up one morning to find that his clothes have been blown off the line in the night, and he embarks on a quest to retrieve them. Along the way he meets a cast of twisted fairy-tale characters: a hare in a red riding hood, a mouse that lives in a clock, and a vegetarian ogre. His new friends give him back the clothes that they have mistakenly put to other uses. McQuillan's scratchy, textured illustrations sparkle, and their slightly off-kilter feel matches the wackiness of the characters, but the missteps in the text (including, confusingly for young children, referring to Busby's shirt as "underwear" at one point) bring the tale down.–Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, Maryland School for the Deaf, Columbia

From Booklist

PreS-Gr. 2. There's a lot of movement in this delightful, rhyming story: a quest, fairy-tale characters barging in, and, throughout, a wind blowing tree branches, animals, and various articles of clothing all over the place. A bear, Busby, living in a cozy mountain lair, wakes up one morning to find that his clothes, which had been drying on the clothesline, have blown away, leaving him a "bare bear." Embarrassed, he sets off in search of them, and, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, encounters a variety of characters, whom he enlists in his quest: a hare dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, a mouse with a bow tie, a warty ogre. The comical artwork, by the illustrator of Cluck O'Clock (2004), bursts with charmingly goofy details and interactive fun, and the swirling, crosshatched brush strokes she uses cleverly give a sense of the breezy backdrop. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved