A very unexpected pleasure. Not too maudlin like some stories or too sad like others. Just a lovely little tale of an orphaned grizzly and his life. ( )

The original novel that was the basis for the movie with line drawing illustrations. Wonderfully told nature story about a grizzly bear, her two cubs and the hardships of living in the wild. Ages 10 and up, worth re-reading many times. ( )

The story of a grizzly bear- the opening scene shows the bear cub gamboling charmingly with his siblings, the mother bear nearby. In the next chapter the mother bear is shot by a man, and only one cub survives. He is just old enough to make it on his own, but missing some crucial instructions he would have received from his mother, goes through a lot of struggles in his first year. Which ends up making him a sullen loner. Several run-ins with mankind leave him with a permanent limp and a deep fear and hatred of humans. The story shows how the bear holds his territory and drives out other, smaller bears. He even manages to drive men from his range- terrorizing them at homestead claims until his name becomes known and folks simply avoid the area. The bear is pretty smart- when first caught in a trap he accidentally treads on the spring that releases it; remembering this is later able to free himself from other traps. Further on in the story he finds a hot spring and discovers that soaking in the pool relieves the pain of his old injuries and he visits the pool many times for this purpose. In another part of the book the bear makes Yellowstone (then a very new park) part of his summer haunts....

The final chapters of the book was actually my favorite part. It describes how a younger bear seeking its own territory comes onto Wahb's land.... there follows a really interesting description of the psychological conflict the two rival bears have, one gradually pushing the other out even though they never had a direct encounter. For once, the main animal character in the story meets a peaceful end....

more at the Dogear Diary ( )

Read this book to death when I was a kid (hence the packing tape binding in my picture). If you've got a kid who likes animal/nature stories, then you could do much worse than this book, IMO. For that matter, the author's written quite a few nature stories and I highly recommend his writings in general. ( )