Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett

Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett
Buy Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: For Sharing
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: With just five different words of text Emily Gravett gives us a book to delight children and adults. Definitely recommended.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 22	Date: March 2009
Publisher: Campbell Books Ltd
ISBN: 978-0230707191
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There's an orange, a pear, an apple and a bear. The orange is perfectly round, the colour of the sun and the pear is just turning to the golden colour which says that it will be beautifully ripe to eat. The apple has a jaunty stalk and just the smallest blemish on its skin. Bear on the other hand is big and brown with claws which look just a little at odds with the benign expression on his face.

And then we start to, er, pair them up. Apple, pear seems quite sensible as the pear balances on the jaunty stalk, but orange bear? Even bear looks nonplussed as his fur turns bright orange. The orange pear is slightly better: it might just be that it's at that stage of perfect ripeness which leaves juice dribbling down your chin. Apple bear – poor bear, now he's a strange green colour and his bottom is rather apple-shaped. Obviously you can't stop there and we work our way through various combinations of bear and fruit until bear solves it all in his own inimitable way and leaves with a merry skip!

The words are few – in fact there are just five in the story – but it's not the words which make this book such a joy to read. It's the wonderful pictures of bear and the fruit, in muted colours, and the hilarious combinations. It's a very quick read – if that's what you choose to make it – but there's plenty to discuss on every page, even down to the value of punctuation for an older child. It's a wonderfully soothing book to read out loud to even the youngest child.

The action is almost surreal as bear metamorphoses into fruit and back again, but there's a tremendous sense of fun and despite the fact that it all looks so simple it's difficult not to be aware of quite how cleverly this has been done. The book has appeared before as a hardback and a paperback but I think that the current version as a board book is particularly inspired as I suspect that there are going to be a lot of very young children who will enjoy this as their first book.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.

Do have a look at other books by Emily Gravett for slightly older children. We've yet to see one which isn't a delight. Another board book which the youngest readers might enjoy is Are We Nearly There Yet? by Katherine Lodge.

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