Grizzly Ben by Alan Dapre and Alex Ayliffe

As far as Ben is concerned, grizzly bears are the best thing in the whole world. He’s disappointed when his parents don’t give him one for his birthday. Instead, he has to make do with trying to teach a toy Cuddly Bear how to be a grizzly bear. That’s not very successful. Cuddly Bear gets sticky and wet and stuck. And Ben gets more and more and more grizzly. And then he gets lost. Suddenly Ben doesn’t feel as grizzly and Cuddly Bear seems more attractive.

Parents the world over will recognise Alan Dapre’s story, and toddlers will identify with Ben (even if they don’t understand why). There’s a beautiful rhythm and flow to the text that sweeps the reader up and carries them along. The repetition of words and phrases makes the story easy to join in with and the typography suggests more active participation too.

Colour plays a major part in the illustrations. Alex Ayliffe uses it to show Ben’s moods as well as to delineate the passage of time. Ben himself is very expressively drawn and leaps off the page. But what actually appealed to me the most was his pet cat, who’s there on every page silently commenting on Ben’s behaviour. There’s a dog too, but he’s the cat’s follower – because when did a cat ever submissively trail behind!

This is another extremely successful offering from Little Door Books with careful attention paid to small details, and an author/illustrator combination that works well together. The arrangement of text and illustrations has clearly been thought about and designed to give maximum impact. I’m already looking forward to sharing this clever little book with children.