Wake Up, Baby Bear is a great new children’s book

Lynn Plourde has written more than 30 awesome children’s books, including my all-time favorite, Merry Moosey Christmas, in which the reindeer take the night off and moose pull Santa’s sleigh.

So I always eagerly await a new book from Lynn. And her newest, Wake Up, BABY BEAR!, published by Down East Books, is going right up to the top of my list of favorite children’s books.

It’s all about a sleeping baby bear. Lots of critters, including a moose, a rabbit, and an owl, try to wake him without luck. A robin even builds a nest on the baby bear’s stomach, and her babies hatch as the young bear wakes up when the robin pecks it on the nose.

Teri Weidner’s illustrations are wonderful. I especially liked the ones showing the baby bear playing with the baby robins.

Lyn lives nearby in Winthrop, the town where I grew up, and says she loves visits from her hard-to-get-to-sleep toddler grandson. Perhaps he was the inspiration for this story.

I can’t wait to read Lynn’s new book to my 4-year-old granddaughter Ada.

About a month ago, our 3 kids and 4 grandchildren gathered for a long weekend at a cottage on Wells Beach. I spent a lot of time pretending to be a bear and chasing Ada around the cottage. She’d be screeching “A bear! A bear!” while looking back at me with a big grin on her face. I’ll see if I can convince Ada that she can be a baby bear, next time we see her.

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.