Stephanie Innes

The best feature of this book is the soft, realistic, and beautiful pictures. Brian Deines is an award-winning illustrator, and justifiably so. You can almost hear the sound of the ocean waves, clacking train, or wailing bagpipes when you study these beautiful pages.

The text is based on a family story. It is part of a series of anecdotes about the family’s experience during the Second World War. This one tells the tale of children sent from England to Canada to escape the bombing and severe rationing.

Two children, Grace and her little brother William, are homesick. Aileen, a nurse assisting with placement, gives William a small teddy bear for comfort. We follow the children from their landing in Halifax to their return to England, five years later. The book explains the children’s loneliness and fear. It would be an excellent jumping point for discussion of the impact on civilians of World War II. It could also be used to introduce children to the topic of separation.

I have to say, though, I found the viewpoint difficult, after the ship lands in Halifax the second page reads:

I watch from the pocket of Aileen’s uniform as the children walked down the ramp.

“Where are their mummies and daddies?” I asked.

“Still overseas,” Aileen said.…

It took me a while to figure out that the teddy bear was having a conversation with the nurse. He is the one who actually tells the story.

There is very little tension in the narrative. The reader is kept at a distance. It feels like a story a grandmother would tell of her experiences. Lovely, but not exactly enthralling.… (meer)

When Lieut. Lawrence Browning Rogers went to war in 1915, he left behind a wife and two children in Canada. For two and a half years, family letters flew back and forth across the Atlantic, and so too, one Christmas season, did Teddy, a small brown teddy-bear sent by Aileen Rogers as a holiday gift for her father. When Lieut. Rogers was killed in October of 1917, while serving as a medic during the Battle of Passchendaele, Teddy was in his front pocket. And when his uniform and medal were sent home to Canada, so too was Teddy...

Co-written by Rogers' great-granddaughter, and narrated by Teddy himself, A Bear in War is the true story of one Canadian family's experiences during World War I. Discovered, along with other war mementos, in a family suitcase in 2002, Teddy can now be found at The Canadian War Museum, where his story - and that of his owners - has been preserved. With its simple, poignant narrative, in which a loving family is caught up in the great historical events of their time, and beautiful illustrations by Brian Deines - whose artwork so impressed me in SkySisters - A Bear In War is well worth the time of any young reader interested in the history of World War I, or in the issue of honoring veterans for their service.… (meer)