The Boy, The Father and the Bear
Per Gustavsson
Greystone Kids
‘Once upon a time, a boy lived with his father where the forest and the blue sea met.’ So begins a mysterious four part tale of loss and transformation.
The first part tells how the boy and his father spend their time collecting berries, fishing or playing soccer close to their home where sea and forest met. However when the boy expresses curiosity about what was in both the forest and the sea, his father tells him of bears living in the forest and sharks swimming in the sea, both of which they need to beware of.
As the years pass, the boy notices that his father is getting older but not so himself. Then one day, despite his son’s pestering and best efforts to facilitate his participation, the father no longer wants to play soccer, insisting that he’s too tired. The days pass with the father sitting in a chair and not wanting to go outside until the boy notices roots growing from his father and burrowing their way through the floor. More time passes and the father has now completely turned into a tree that has grown so tall that its upper branches have cracked the ceiling. Now what? wonders his son. Eventually the house is no more, so large has the tree grown, so the boy climbs up and looks in turn towards the horizon and the sea,
Down comes the rain, causing the water to rise and rise and the boy to climb up and up. At last the tree starts moving through the water like a boat. Come the evening he feels completely alone but manages to fall asleep. It’s then his life changes for ever.
Next morning what should he discover but a bear sitting, absolutely still at the opposite end of the tree trunk looking at the boy. Having tried unsuccessfully to communicate with said bear, the boy decides to swim towards the land in the distance. In he jumps followed by the bear; the latter begins sinking and the boy dives down hoping to rescue it from the ocean floor. Eventually their feet touch what feels like ground and the boy realises what they’re resting on.
Instead of devouring the two, the shark rescues them and together they reach land where the boy falls fast asleep beneath the stars.
In the final part, the boy wakes to find no bear but he’s surrounded by trees, similar to those he’d left, trees that can used to build houses. However from the edge of the forest, the bear stands watching and the boy begins leaving food just in case … Finally he entices the creature right inside his house and so begins an unlikely friendship with his ursine friend doing the things the boy’s father had done once upon a time.
The book concludes with a poem, the final lines of which are: ‘Good new thoughts come every day / And Darkness lets me be’.
The colour of the digitally rendered pencil illustrations changes for each section – from green to purple to blue to brown. Told in a manner that leaves readers free to make their own interpretations, with its themes of life, death and fresh beginnings, this is a book that allows new meanings to emerge if read and discussed over and over.
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