Orange Pear Apple Bear

by Emily Gravett, Emily Gravett (Illustrator)

Overview

In only five words — four of which are in the title — Kate Greenaway Medalist Emily Gravett presents a delightful picture book that is "simple and stunning" (The Guardian), and "daring, original, and a joy" (Sunday Times, London).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416939993
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	05/22/2007
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	1,075,504
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	1 - 4 Years

About the Author

Emily Gravett is the author and illustrator of many children’s books, including Matilda’s Cat, Again!, Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears (winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal), Meerkat Mail, Tidy, and Old Hat. Her first book, Wolves, was the winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Award for Illustration. Her second book, Orange Pear Apple Bear, was a Quills Award finalist, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and on the shortlist for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Emily lives in Brighton, England, with her partner, their daughter, and the family dog. Visit her at EmilyGravett.com.

Emily Gravett is the author and illustrator of many children’s books, including Matilda’s Cat, Again!, Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears (winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal), Meerkat Mail, Tidy, and Old Hat. Her first book, Wolves, was the winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Award for Illustration. Her second book, Orange Pear Apple Bear, was a Quills Award finalist, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and on the shortlist for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Emily lives in Brighton, England, with her partner, their daughter, and the family dog. Visit her at EmilyGravett.com.

Editorial Reviews

"Daring, original, and a joy."
— Sunday Times, London

From the Publisher

With four words and striking illustrations, author Emily Gravett creates another winner that will sit perfectly alongside Wolves, for which she won Britain's prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal. In Orange Pear Apple Bear, Gravett follows a buoyant bruin through several spreads, rearranging the four words to create different scenes in which the bear interacts with fruit, sometimes even taking on the color of the fruit itself. Sound simple? It is, and that's what makes the book so brilliant. Dazzling, sparse, and always profound, this is a charmer for the youngest readers, whose imaginations are bound to take flight.

…a quietly brilliant book for younger children by Britain's Emily Gravett that includes just five words: the title's four plus a kicker. Each word gets its own iconic rendering, which is then mixed and matched with the others in a rising tide of creative (and instructive) silliness.
—The Washington Post

Elizabeth Ward

Gravett, who won the Kate Greenaway Medal for Wolves, has another winner here. Using just the four words in the title in various combinations (plus a fifth word for a punchline), she ingeniously chronicles a big friendly bear's encounter with some fresh produce. Some of the vignettes are semi-reality based: the bear juggles the fruit ("Apple, bear, orange, pear") and balances all three pieces on his nose ("Orange, pear, apple, bear"). But other spreads are thoroughly fanciful: in one, Gravett tints the pear bright orange, and renders the dubious-looking bear in the green and blush hues of a Granny Smith apple ("Orange pear/ Apple bear"). The ursine hero later makes a quick meal of each fruit ("Pear, bear") and trots off into the sunset to the sound of the satisfactory punchline: "There!" Gravett sets her simple, almost iconic watercolor images against crisp white backgrounds. The fruit looks good enough to eat, and the bear, who clearly relishes his moment in the spotlight, is a winning performer. Ages 1-4. (May)

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Publishers Weekly

Loose line-and-watercolor illustrations ring the changes on all the possible combinations of the four title words in this deliciously playful romp. A very large, very genial bear first contemplates, then plays with the fruit, first turning orange, then morphing into an apple and a pear (in illustrations that emphasize his delightfully rounded posterior). The fruits themselves appear alone, in stacks and in simple compositions that recall Cezanne's still lifes. It's a masterpiece of superbly controlled pacing, each object and its corresponding word appearing initially alone on the page, then combining in twos, then all rushing together as the bear's play intensifies, then slowing again as he eats the fruits, one by one, in a glorious display of happy gluttony. The text employs only the four words of the title (with one notable, concluding exception), rearranging themselves to produce the felicitously surprising pictorial combinations. The creamy background and gray typeface complement the light lines and bright colors of the fruits, and the bear is a striking example of how, in this case at least, less is definitely more. (Picture book. 1-4)

Kirkus Reviews