Midsummer Knight (review)

A rotund bear wearing an iron knight's helmet floats peacefully down a lazy river. His craft bumps the shore, and he sets off into the forest. Bees whose honey he thinks to raid chase him to a mysterious door in the base of a large tree, and his adventures begin. Observant and knowing readers of this wordless picture book will note that he passes through a fairy ring to get to the door, and hence they will be less surprised than he when he finds himself in a fairy world on the other side of the tree. Fortunately, he has shrunk to fairy size (well, extra-large fairy size), and he proves more than a match for the corrupt steward (who looks an awful lot like Shakespeare) who has taken the king and queen prisoner and is looting the royal treasury. Trickery, escape, clever tracking, and a doozy of a swordfight see things put to rights, and the happy bear returns triumphantly through the tree to his normal size. This captivating sequel to The Boy, the Bear, the Baron, the Bard (BCCB 12/04) contains sly intertextual references to the first book, but it stands alone in terms of its story. Readers looking for references to Shakespeare's play other than the inclusion of the bard himself and the fairyland setting will be disappointed, but that's all that will disappoint them. Rogers is a masterful visual storyteller, keeping things interesting through the play of light and shadow and the shifting of perspective as the bear moves through his adventure while maintaining a clear narrative line that even those inexperienced in the reading of sequential art can follow. Perhaps it's his eyes, perhaps his subtle bear-y mouth, but the bear exudes a sense of capable serenity no matter what the circumstances that marks him as a particularly strong yet endearing hero, while the round-headed little boy fairy who enlists his aid in the first place is just plain endearing.