Procure A Boy And A Bear In A Boat By Dave Shelton Displayed In Manuscript

yeah, no that sums up my feelings after I finished this book, Maybe its the book or maybe its me, but there was no connection between the two of us,

I have a feeling that there is a metaphor hidden behind this endless, pointless story, that a realist like me just cant get hold of.
I never reached a point at where I found myself able to understand what the author was trying to lay out in front of me.
And that, Im very sure, is the reason I felt so unenthusiastic about the book in general,

From my point of view, if you feel like wasting a bit of time reading about a bear, a boy, a boat, endless masses of water and a few strange happenings every now and then, or if youre a complete different kind of a person than I am, this book is for you.


Я тут в тихом восторге. Шикарная книга, не понимаю почему на гр такой низкий рейтинг. Хотя, если подумать, то она не для понимания всех. Слишком тонок юмор обожаю такое, ирония вагон и слишком напряжно искать смысл. Но он там есть. Нужно только включить мозги.
Хочу издание себе на полочку. Русское от Поляндрии стоит как три обычные книги, но

оно отличное. Качество что самого издания что перевода превосходное.

Итоговая оценка:изза не в тему открытый конец Basically, everything you need to know about this book is written in the title: theres a boy and a bear, and theyre in a boat.
Theres a lot of boredom and hunger, and endless rowing on the way to somewhere, The thing I liked most was The Very Last Sandwich,

I definitely should have done my research before picking this up, though, Apparently the whole book is a metaphor for life, Interesting concept, but BORING. Fantastic book. 'Life of Pi' crossed with 'Waiting for Godot' for children, Possibly the coolest kids' book cover design ever on this hardback edition, Not surprised they chose a different approach for the paperback though : This is an odd little book for sure, Shelton's illustrations have some of the whimsy of Peggy Fortnum's classic drawings of Paddington Bear, but the story of this unnamed ursine and lad, though grounded in a wealth of specific physical detail, is almost certainly too amorphous for most children's taste.
The book plainly operates at a symbolic level, but it's not as obvious about at it as, say, Jonathan Livingstone Seagull or The Old Man and the Sea.
It's like an unlikely meeting of Paddington and Candide, or perhaps Godot's patient pals, I liked it quite a bit, I loved this book, although it is about as quirky as they come and, I suspect, will not appeal to everyone, Just as the title says, it is about a boy and a bear in a boat, Nothing more, nothing less. Why they are in the boat, where the boy was trying to go, why a bear is piloting this boat, well, none of that is explained, Even though this is a children's book, I think many adults will enjoy it as much, if not more, than the middle grade readers at which it is aimed.
As an adult, I kept looking at the story, thinking 'what does all of this mean', It feels like a sort of metaphor for life itself, Here we are, plunked into this ocean of life, not given much of a map, guided by an affable, but sometimes equally clueless parent/teacher/mentor, heading we know not where, and dealing with endless "unforeseeable anomalies" along the way, as best we can.
Does that sound familiar to you , too The ending comes as a real surprise, As the pages wound down, I kept thinking, "well, he really doesn't have much time left to wrap this up", Here is an author who doesn't conform to expectations though, I have a feeling Mr, Shelton was telling this story with a bit of a chuckle, I also loved all the Britishisms, Thank goodness they didn't doctor this up for the American market!
This book is now on the short list for the Carnegie Medal for children's literature.
It seemed to be just one episode of a longer story so it didn't have a proper beginning or ending, it was all just part of the middle.
There was no way of knowing what had gone on before or what would happen after, And, actually, the boy didn't have much of a clue about what was going on now,

Is it possible to write a simple, abstract fable largely about a character being bored that is not itself boring That's the question I kept asking myself as I read this book.
For a large part of the story nothing much happens, just the boy sitting in the boat with nothing to do while the bear contentedly rows, sleeps, eats, and has tea.
There was no explanation for this situation and no conclusion, it just is, Yet something kept me captivated and reading, And that's not the entire storythere is a plot and eventful things do happenbut it's largely a story of isolation and inactivity.
Part Zen, part Existentialism, and part sitelinkJoe Versus the Volcano, It's not the kind of story you can really think about or analyze, it's one you feel I don't know what I liked about it or why, but I did.
And that's enough. waiting for godot meets the little prince, I love it so much I can't even tell you, Utterly lovely, odd and really rather magical, This book is firstly drop dead gorgeous at first sight and was winner of theKitschies Inky Tentacle cover award,

The insides don't disappoint either, The story is simple, slow and loveable a bit like the bear himself and draws you into its own little world effortlessly,

The purposeful lack of detail gives it a dreamlike quality and a feeling of being as lost as the characters in the story.
All floating on a sea of wellchosen words and gorgeous illustrations,

I love this book, It's fiendishly hard to know what to make of this one, It's bold and audacious, and I don't think it entirely works, but it's hard not to admire its courage,

This is apage book with only two characters, Neither is given a name they are only referred to as Boy and Bear, The plot is maddeningly obscure in almost all its essential points, The Boy, for reasons left entirely unexplained, asks the Bear to row him across an unnamed body of water, to a destination identified only as "the other side.
" Their attempts to reach that other side constitute the entirety of the book,

The journey drags on for days and days, They run out of food on multiple occasions, For huge swathes of the book, nothing is happening at all the Bear rows, and the Boy attempts to find some way in which to occupy himself.


There is a comic book in the boat, left there by a previous passenger, It is in a language the boy doesn't know, but he looks at it over and over again anyway, And that's it. No explanation is ever given, Similarly, the duo arrive eventually on a Mary Celestelike abandoned ship, It seems that something is going to happen, . . but nothing does. The ship simply exists, at least until the boy puts a hole in it while trying to make the bear tea on a gas stove.


And at the end of the book, after a storm has destroyed the rowboat, and the Boy and the Bear are left floating alone in the ocean, the Boy begins rowing the bear, with a ukelele as an oar.
And that's it. Land is never sighted. The journey is never completed, Frankly, I've never read a children's book with less of a conclusion, and the only books of any kind that were even comparable are things like Kafka's The Castle.


Parts of the book have a certain humor to them, aided by Shelton's drawings other parts of it have a hypnotic, meditative quality.
The prose, in places, is beautiful, But I don't feel like it ever truly confronts its insularity, or even hints at a reason for the lack of any kind of context.
I compare it to something like Anne Ursu's book Breadcrumbs, which also leaves any number of things unexplained, but does so because they're things the protagonist has no way to know.
Some of the things in A Boy and A Bear in a Boat could fit into this category, such as the parts with the abandoned ship, but it's hard to figure a reason the Boy's journey remains so obscure other than trying to be too artsy.


I have no idea who the audience for this book would be nearly all middlegrade readers will likely be frustrated by the dreamlike, molasseslike pace and the lack of anything like an ending, and adult readers who enjoy Calvino and Kafka and the more inaccessible bits of Eco will probably find that the book doesn't explore the interior of its characters in enough depth to be interesting.
But you have to give Shelton credit for trying something different, so I'll give it three as a compromise, A boy on his own seeks to cross a body of water from a bear in a small boat, The bear is very proud of his boat and assures the boy that the crossing will take no time at all, Unfortunately, "unforeseeable anomalies" occur and the crossing takes much longer than expected,
I was looking forward to reading this book when I read the description, I thought it would be a quick, fun, and light read that I would be able to recommend to reluctant middlegrade readers, It was a quick and light read, but it was not fun, All the "unforeseeable anomalies" became stressful to read, The boy and the bear ran out of food and water and by the end of the book, that was the least of their worries.

I don't expect a happy ending for all the books I read, often the best stories don't have a happy ending, but I thought that this book deserved a happy ending because of all the trials and tribulations that the two characters went through.
But, I was disappointed. I don't consider the ending to be happy, in fact, I didn't think it was much of an ending at all, I hope that the author didn't leave it as a cliffhanger in hopes of writing a sequel, A boy and a bear go to sea, equipped with a suitcase, a comic book, and a ukulele, The bear assures the boy that they are traveling a short distance and it really shouldn't take very long, But then they encounter "unforeseeable anomalies": turbulent stormy seas! a terrifying sea monster! and the rank remains of The Very Last Sandwich, The odds are pitted against the boy and the bear and their boat,

Will the Harriet, their trusted vessel, withstand the violent lashings of the salty waves And will anyone ever answer their message in a bottle This is a book aimed atyear olds, and I suspect, boys.
However the essentially existentialist narrative may attract an older audience who would see it as a metaphor for life and experience, In simple terms it is about a boy and a bear on a boat, There is no explanation why, where or when and the ending is left open, The bear, the captain does not always inspire confidence, they experience various anomalies and unexplained problems but, but together they struggle on, For me the strongest feature of this book was the beautiful artwork, which I hope made it into the paperback edition, This read a little like a cross between Samuel Becket's 'Waiting for Godot' and 'The Life of Pi' but foryear olds, I would have liked a little more humour, I found the pace unbalanced and the boy a little irritating, I have a problem with any book that uses the word 'boring' as I spend some much time persuading children not to use it it, but I suppose that is my personal hang up.


All in all, beautifully illustrated, quirky, unusual and a book I may have to brood over before I settle on a final star rating, but my initial impression is that I think this would have been better on theGreenaway shortlist than on the Carnegie.
The image text cohesion was great, the text itself, less satisfying I wanted to turn the page to see the next illustration rather than read what happened next.
For me it wasn't in the same league as David Almond's 'My Name is Mina' Carnegieshortlist, Having said that I can see that some people would see this as a, so try it and see! This is one of the slowest, least interesting, most boring kids' books I've read.
Those attributes are even more pronounced and disappointing because the cover leads one to expect an exciting adventure, The illustrations are excellent, and I would love to read a picture book by Shelton, but I don't think I'll be recommending his novel to anyone.
It felt much like a text you'd be required to read for a college philosophy class, not like a novel aimed at middle schoolers.
. . and it held my attention about as well as my college philosophy texts did, which is to say not very well, As for the ending, or lack thereof while I myself prefer happy endings, I know some stories can't end happily, However, I think every story should at least have a resolution of SOME kind, especially a story for kids,

I appreciate that Shelton experimented with something outside the norm in this, but this type of book would probably work better for adult fiction, or even YA, than for the middleschool demographic.
The kind of book you can put down and pick up after a few weeks for another chapter with a kiddo, Myyo had to stop reading a couple times tonight because he giggled so much that he got the hiccups, So that'll be worth some right there, .