Something's up with that big brown bear, because before the story ever starts, he's hiding behind a tree. Then, a boy spots the bear in his apartment hallway, looking terribly suspicious. The boy closes the door behind him and says to his cake-baking mother: "Mom, there's a bear at the door!"
So begins this charming, ingeniously crafted German import, with a funny conversation between mother and son. Mom's lines are in red: "How did the bear get up here?" "He took the elevator." "The elevator?" "The elevator." "The bear pressed the button and took the elevator?" "Of course! The elevator doesn't work if no one presses the button." As the boy imagines how the bear might have found his way from the forest to their 11th-floor apartment, the illustrations show the bear doing exactly what the boy is describing to his mother, whether it's riding the bus to the city or cycling to the bus station, with a helmet, of course. ("And what does the bear want, here on our eleventh floor?" "To look at the sea.") In a wonderfully appealing double-page cityscape, bear and boy are shown eating mom-made Black Forest cake on a big red picnic blanket on top of a tall building, with a distant view of the sea.
Author Sabine Lipan skillfully captures the simultaneously reasonable and improbable imaginings of a young boy. Illustrator Manuela Olten's playful, deliciously creamy acrylic paint and colored pencil artwork will have readers longing for their own unexpected forest visitor. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness