The Biggest Bear

By Lynd Ward

  • was an American artist and novelist.

  • First published in 1952.

  • Usually marked as suitable for 4-7 y.o. but I think it can be read by teenagers due to the book being very dated.

Johnny Orchard goes hunting for a bearskin to hang on his family’s barn and returns with a small bundle of trouble. This is very nicely put. When the bear becomes too much of a nuisance they agree Johnny should kill him.

I have a massive collection of Caldecott books and some of them sound dated. The Biggest Bear can be classed as unacceptable by some Western parents of younger children. It is evil. The boy goes to the forest to kill a bear, picks up a bear cub, brings it up and then takes it back to the forest when they all get fed up. This is not the end of the story. The bear feels attached and comes back. The boy takes it back to the forest meaning to shoot it dead, but both of them get trapped by a group of men who later take the bear to the zoo. Gosh. That’s sad. I wouldn’t read it to a modern 7-year-old.

There is a ‘but’ though. The artwork is magical. To me it doesn’t look dated at all. So I decided to twist the story. Maybe it’s a crime committed against a masterpiece in literature but I had only two options - never show this book to children or doctor it a bit.

We have just finished reading Finding Winnie with my little students. I wanted to read one more book that sounds more or less realistic and features a bear that gets to live with people and then is moved to the zoo. These two stories are so similar and different at the same time. And we love comparing.

So I decided to drop the bits about killing bears. In my version the boy wants to brag and get a pelt but ends up too young and gentle for that. He returns with a bear and they become friends. But then neighbours start complaining and he takes him to the forest where they get trapped. The bear is taken to the zoo where the boy can visit him and bring him treats.

Now we can compare Winnie and Bear. One is rescued by a vet, another one by a little boy. Both of them eat all they can find and grow too big to be handled. Winnie gets sent to the zoo to be safe there, Bear gets sent to the zoo to entertain people. Winnie makes her way into millions of hearts, Bear gets betrayed by the friend.

A few books in my collection don’t fit a modern classroom. They are different, sometimes boring, sometimes too naive or brutal. I do read them though with my 8-12-year-old students because those books show us how our world has changed. They are perfect for exercising critical thinking skills.

We first talk about the ways back in the 1950s. Looks like back then killing bears was a nice thing to do and cool enough to brag about. It also reminded me of another Caldecott Medal book by Paul Zelinsky and Anne Isaacs - Swamp Angel. We can talk with the students about culture and how some animals become a big part of it and find their way into art, literature and legends in certain countries.

Hunting bears was so common that even a little boy felt he wanted to do it.

We talk about how important the opinion of neighbours was back then. We find evidence in the text.

Whenever Johnny went down the road to the store for a piece of maple sugar or something, he always felt humiliated. The other barns in the valley usually had a bearskin nailed up to dry. Buut never Johnny’s barn.

Every fall for three years Mr. McLean had come in with a bear.

See how powerful the illustrations are. Johnny is tiny and lonely, his little figure is miserable and he looks ashamed walking through this hall of fame. He gets impressed by Mr. McLean and his skills. The man looks powerful and strong carrying a massive body on his shoulders. He owns this world and Johnny can’t stomach humiliation. Later the boy finds out another neighbour shot three bears in a row. This winds him up. You’d think it can’t get any worse but Johnny finds out his grandfather is a bit of a coward.

It was very humiliating.

Johnny wants to show them all that he is a man. His little body is stiff. He is dead set on finding a bear and shooting them. Killing a bear is not going to be a proper closure. He wants to shoot it so fast the bear doesn’t know what hit it. Having a bearskin is not enough either. It has to be the biggest in the whole valley.

Is being an achiever always a good thing? Do you really always need to beat someone to it?

How has our attitude towards animals changed?

Johnny eventually finds the bear, feeds him a piece of maple sugar and cradles him in his arms. A little gentle protector who forgets about his ambitions and adopts the one that belongs in the wild.

The bear appears to be not a fussy eater. In fact, he eats anything and everything. Mostly he gobbles up the things that are not his. He starts with emptying everything on their farm, moves on to the neighbours’ barns and sheds and ends up in trouble.

The bear sometimes looks more human than people in the book. He has feelings. He feels excited, scared and worried. He understands it’s time to go for good. But he just can’t stay away from Johnny.

He looks so sorrowful watching Johnny. I believe he very much understands they are doomed. It is safer for him to leave, but he can’t.

Johnny takes him away on a boat. The gorgeous creature sitting in silence with an unbearable burden of sorrow.

Johnny and his father talked it over and they decided there was only one thing to do. Johnny said he would do it.

Lynd Ward doesn’t say what this one thing is but we can easily guess.

The inevitable never happens as they get trapped by some men who get animals for the zoo in the city. They take the bear away and it sounds like a good thing to do. In extremely scarce words Ward paints this picture of a happy ending. Like it’s a truly good thing. The bear is lucky to end up in a cage far from its home.

Is it?

To sum it up, the book is very good to compare with modern culture, traditions and other stories about friendship between a man and a bear.