Decent read aloud-maybe a little long. Origin story of the Ute Indians bear dance. ( )

Personal Responses:
I thought this was a very respectful telling of a Native American tradition. The pictures are beautiful and really draw you into the story. I have a great respect for the Native American traditions and enjoy learning about them.

Curricular Connections:
I would use this as a read aloud for story time. ( )

Based upon the Ute tribe oral story, Will Hobbs writes about a Native American boy named Short Tail, who ventures into the mountains to look for Great Bear, whom he also calls Grandfather. Spring had arrived, and he did not see the bear come out of his winter hibernation. At the top of the mountain, Short Tail fell asleep, and the rest of the story is his dream. In that dream, Great Bear was grateful that the boy woke him up for Spring, and brought him into the woods to join all the other bears for a dance. Later, Short Tail awoke and shared the bear dance with his own people. In the nearby woods, Short Tail catches a glimpse of a watching bear. The illustrations by Jill Kastner are dark. Her oil paintings show landscapes of mountains, woods, and meadows. Reader see the images of bears, humans, and nature, almost melting into one another. On one gorgeous page, we see the boy sleeping, almost as if he is part of the mountain. The story has an underlying message of respecting nature, and the illustrations definitely extend that theme. ( )

Hobbs' fictionalized version of the traditional Ute bear dance story is enhanced by the large picture-book format featuring Kastner's double-spread oil paintings, in which the illustrator cues the dream sequences, subtly exposing the bear and the boy as part of the landscape. Kastner's evocative dance scenes add a fine note of drama to the story.

Read aloud for Native American/bear topic. ( )