What is this about?
Bear and Rat are having a conversation about their friendship, through the best and worst of times.
What else is this about?
I don’t know how parents explain the tough things to their kids: that one day they might lose their friends, and they may never come back.
Blurb
A powerful and uplifting story about loving friendship,
even through the hardest of times.Bear and Rat are the best of friends who do everything together,
but Rat wonders if Bear will always be there to hold her hand,
no matter what happens …
Bear and Rat are best friends, when one day Rat asks:
‘Bear,” said Rat, “Will you hold my hand when we have to cross the river?”
To which Bear answers:
“Absolutely,” exclaimed Bear. “And if the river’s really deep, I’ll carry you on my shoulders too.
That right there is one of the profoundly thoughtful questions in this book.
Christopher Cheng writes Bear and Rat’s relationship through a series of questions like this, from the familiar (Will you hold my hand as you read spooky stories?) to the ones like the above quote that absolutely tugged at my heart. These are some of the questions that always leave me wondering how parents have these conversations with their kids.
What makes this all the more poignant is that this book was written as a way for Christopher Cheng to come to terms with his wife’s cancer diagnosis, and what might happen. Writing Bear and Rat was how he worked through it all. It makes sense that the most heartbreaking question is when Rat asks what Bear will do if Rat has to leave., and Bear cannot follow.
And Bear comes up with a beautiful answer that (and I am paraphrasing here) even if Rat has to leave, Bear will carry him in his heart, and his memories that will remind him they have been best friends forever.
If that didn’t break your heart enough, there are the illustrations that come with this book. Stephen Michael King is an award-winning author who says that illustrating this book was about showing Bear and Rat’s youthfulness, as they start off n a journey somewhere. And as the questions progress into something deeper, the illustrations take Bear and Rat into the colder seasons, and no matter how prepared they are (umbrellas for the rain) they can’t quite beat the weather. Still though they persevere until the end.
I admire any book that makes these difficult conversations accessible, and more importantly, take old and young readers through a tough journey.
This is a book about the power of friendships, about holding someone up through the worst of times and keeping them close in your heart.
Sighs. Totally worth the tears you’ll shed over this.
