Eat Like a Bear by April Pulley Sayre (review)

“Can you eat like a bear?” this early nature study book asks. It’s harder than you may think: the melodic text follows the practical bear month by month from spring wakeup to winter sleep as she digs through the spring snow for horsetails, makes do with a frozen bison hide, licks up escaping ants from a torn-up tree, gulps down cutworm moths, and digs up squirrel-left pine cones rather than just dining sumptuously on elk (the calf gets away) and trout (she does catch one, but it’s hardly the bulk of her diet). The lilting text hovers between poetry and prose, avoiding metrically structured lines but drawing on gentle internal and end rhymes and repetition to provide shape and rhythm. The present-tense second-person (second-bear?) narration is swift and conversational (“Wait. What was that?/ Tilt your head./ Use your ears./ Dig in. Dig down”), with evocative sound and detail (“…ants!/ Chew them, sour and squirming./ Lick your lips”) and the relentless pulse of the hunt for food (“Find food/ But where?” opens every month’s pages) adding vitality. Adult explanation could help flesh out specifics about “talus slopes” and “cutworm moths,” but they’re clear enough in context to avoid impairing the narrative flow. Jenkins’ paper-collage art is superlative here; compositions are creative, dramatic, and even comical (a page turn after the elk chase reveals the disappointed bear peering out at the audience), and the textured blend of bristle and fur is aptly conveyed (by, according to the note, a Mexican bark paper). A spread of end matter provides compact and solid additional information about bears, their diet, and their habits and habitats. Kids who think that eating like a bear means roaring around and nomming everything in sight are in for a surprise.