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A bear wants to paint a picture, and so he does; however, two fine, proper gentlemen don't think that it is a very fine picture at all. But just because they don't see what the bear sees doesn't make it a bad picture, right? Daniel Pinkwater turns art (and art critics) upside down in this classic tale, now beautifully reillustrated by D. B. Johnson.
Imaginative illustrations from a notable ursine stylist, Johnson (Henry Hikes to Fitchburg), lend pizzazz to this reillustrated 1972 bear-centric tale from Pinkwater, author of the Larry polar bear series. Bear, depicted in speckled charcoal with a sky-blue glint in his eyes, is painting a picture in rainbow hues. As Bear paints, "two fine, proper gentlemen" in natty attire stroll by and comment on his work. "Bears can't paint pictures," they sniff. "Nobody can tell what it is supposed to be." Bear, "mixing just the right kind of yellow," calmly contradicts them and keeps painting. Through the "gentlemen's" patronizing dialogue, Pinkwater conjures sympathy for the childlike yet confident Bear. Johnson borrows Jon Agee's upright style for the men's pointy noses and broad comic gestures, reinforcing the words with sly visual details. When Bear asserts that his abstract piece depicts a tree by a stream, Johnson pictures the flustered critics sinking into the water within the image so that only their distinctive hats remain, while the action of the grayscale-tinted characters is made to complement the still painting's energetic palette. Readers who follow the lead of curving type and invert the book see a multicolored bear's face in the finished painting, aptly concluding this paean to self-expression. Ages 4-8.
Daniel Pinkwater is crazy about writing, and has been trying to learn how to do it for fifty years. He has written about a hundred books, all but two or three of them good. People who own radios may know Daniel Pinkwater as a popular commentator and children's book reviewer on National Public Radio. At one time, he lived in Los Angeles, went to a fancy private school with the children of movie stars, and ate in The Hat numerous times. He lives with his wife, the illustrator and novelist Jill Pinkwater, and several dogs and cats in a very old farmhouse in New York's Hudson River Valley.
D. B. Johnson has been a freelance illustrator for more than twenty years and has done editorial cartoons, comic strips, and conceptual illustrations for magazines and newspapers around the country. Mr. Johnson's first picture book, Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, was a New York Times bestseller and a Publishers Weekly bestseller, as well as an American Bookseller "Pick of the Lists." Henry Hikes to Fitchburg also won numerous awards, including the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Picture Books and the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award. Mr. Johnson and his wife, Linda, live in New Hampshire.
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