The Dancing Bear

by Michael Morpurgo

Overview

A resonant story about a lonely girl who adopts an abandoned bear cub. When a rock star and his film crew arrive to shoot a music video, the whole town is caught up in the excitement and Roxanne leaves behind her beloved bear forever. "This tightly constructed short story has a gentle tone. . . .Charcoal illustrations are soft and blurred, spare and yet suggestive enough to assist readers in visualizing additional details in order to keep the story in mind." -- School Library Journal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780008728199
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/11/2025
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.19(d)
Age Range:	7 - 9 Years

About the Author

Michael Morpurgo OBE is one of Britain's best loved writers for children, with sales of over 35 million copies. He has written over 150 books, has served as Children’s Laureate, and has won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, the Writers Guild Award, the Whitbread Award, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Eleanor Farjeon Lifetime Achievement Award. With his wife, Clare, he is the co-founder of Farms for City Children. Michael was knighted in 2018 for services to literature and charity.

Editorial Reviews

Readers of Morpurgo's Waiting for Anya (1990), which also featured an orphaned bear cub, may feel this novella is set in the same tiny, sheepherding village in the French Pyrenees. Roxanne, a sweet girl who sings like an angel, adopts a gentle abandoned cub that adores her. Years later, when a famous pop singer and his entourage arrive to make a music video based on "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," Roxanne is given a starring role; she is soon charmed away to a life of fame and fortune, leaving her beloved bear behind. The morning after her departure, the bear is found dead, upright in his cage as if staring after Roxanne.

This is an affecting story, certainly, but the bear's sudden death is melodramatic, and Roxanne is such a sympathetic character that her sudden neglect of home ties is scarcely credible. However, the Pied Piper theme is thoroughly developed, and the misty black- and-white drawings echo the pervasive melancholy of the text.

Kirkus Reviews