Let me explain. The first book is called "The Bear Ate Your Sandwich" and it is written and drawn by someone called Julia Sarcone-Roach. The pictures are delicious! It is an easy book to read, and small people and their dogs can really enjoy it together. There are sandwiches, enough said. The plot is this: Bear wakes up, smells berries, climbs in truck, travels and explores, finds delicious sandwich and eats it, travels home. But there's a surprise ending, and it involves ears. They are good ears, and this is a great book. Can we believe that the bear really ate the sandwich?
The second book is for bigger people and definitely has a bear, a pretty big and scary one. This book, called "There Will Be Bears", doesn't have pictures, but as you read it your brain will be supplying some pretty vivid ones to go along with the story. There is a family of people but the two most important ones are the boy, Tyson, and the Grandpa, Gene or "Gramps". They have a special bond that gets tested in some interesting ways. You wonder for a little bit if they'll be able to keep their love strong, and then you wonder if they'll be eaten by a bear! I really thought this book was going to have an unhappy, and very messy, ending. Before the bear there were some other bad things for Tyson to deal with, and the author does a good job of putting in some funny stuff to go along with the hard stuff.
You really want things to work out for Tyson, he is a good guy and his story is a good story. Once you start you want to keep reading, and there's a lot of action to keep Tyson's story exciting. You might never have a chance to go tracking elk, and you may never have a huge bear charging down a hill at you, but you probably have had trouble with a friend, and you might have had some girl (or boy) trouble. Maybe your grandparents are growing old, too, and you might have felt sad and angry at things happening in your family. You'll be rooting for Tyson and hoping that bear doesn't get him! Thank you Ryan Gebhart for creating an adventure that made the four walls of my suburban home melt away for an afternoon. Now I'm going to lick my tail end and go to sleep.
