I Am Friendly: Confessions of a Helpful Bear

When you bear the title of apex predator, your reputation precedes you, and trying to get animals that could become your prey to see you in a more favorable light can be a real challenge. I Am Friendly: Confessions of a Helpful Bear begins with the book’s central character, a grizzly bear, breaking the fourth wall and addressing readers directly. (See the Excerpt” above.) The grizzly, whose gender is not revealed in the text but is referred to as “she” on the dust jacket flap, spends her day providing readers with numerous examples of her helpful friendliness and thoughtfulness, acts such as reuniting a “lost” fawn with its mother, preventing a rabbit from falling down a deep hole (actually its burrow), and covering a badger eating its favourite food, earthworms, with honey, in the mistaken belief that it’s a honey badger. As night approaches, the grizzly beds down, “curling up in a field of grass”. Again breaking the fourth wall, the grizzly addresses the reader.

Hey, you look lonely there with your arms empty like that. Do you want a hug?

Come closer.

Turning the page to the final spread reveals the grizzly, arms outstretched, offering – what else? A “BEAR HUG!” plus a “Good Night. Sleep tight. And remember to dream with all your might.”

The book’s delightful humour comes from the contradictions between what Tracy’s text says and what Kraan’s cartoon-style illustrations reveal. The grizzly bear’s “thoughtfulness” is thoughtlessly foisted on those the bear decides need her help, and the unwilling recipients’ natural response to the predator’s presence, fear, is well-reflected in Kraan’s art [See cover image]. Despite the story grizzly’s acknowledgment that “... it is easy to get the wrong idea about me because of my sharp claws, giant teeth, and powerfully fishy breath”, Kraan’s rendering of this predator, which can weigh over 200 kg and stand some 2.4 m on its hind legs, is actually quite benign and almost cuddly and teddy bearish.

And who could have guessed that I Am Friendly: Confessions of a Helpful Bear would ultimately turn out to be a bedtime story.