Books like Bears in the Night — picked by fans

The whole Mother Bruce series is hilarious, especially Santa Bruce. I love the juxtaposition of Bruce’s grumpy attitude and the other characters’ enthusiasm. The characters’ facial expressions and body language are priceless. The animals get so excited when they see Bruce in his red suit, and they act just like kids do when they see Santa at the mall. Higgins even throws in some humor for the adult readers—in the ask of each of the animals—and near the end Bruce looks as exasperated as a parent trying to keep up with their holiday to-do list. To me this book has everything: great illustrations, an adorable cast of characters, and loads of humor. Higgins has captured the energy and excitement of the holidays perfectly.

Bear Stays Up for Christmas skillfully portrays how friends will work together to help each other achieve their goals. The book also shows that each of us is unique, and we cannot be expected to do everything exactly the same as our friends. The message of kindness, friendship, acceptance is clear throughout the story.

Thea's Christmas visit to her estranged father and his new family in Norway is disappointing and infuriating, until she meets the bear. In this fiction, Sarah Lean conveys so much truth. Her beautiful, mistreated, hungry, lonely bear is so real, he brings tears to my eyes. Thea tries desperately to protect her new best friend from the locals who consider him a threat, because she knows “They would not take the time to look into his eyes, to question and discover what he was really like." I wish everyone would take the time to look into animals' eyes, to see who they really are, and let them be.

I adore this picture book and return to it often, to read to myself or to share with children. The story of three children meeting Stillwater, a peaceful panda, is fresh and fun. Stillwater teaches each child through an ancient story. The tone of the book and Muth’s illustrations perfectly reflect the concepts of stillness, self-awareness, self-acceptance, and non-judgment.

Jon Muth says it best when he writes in his author’s note: “’Zen Shorts’ are short meditations—ideas to puzzle over—tools which hone our ability to act with intuition. They have no goal, but they often challenge us to reexamine our habits, desires, concepts, and fears.”

It's such a sweet story about being yourself.

Bunnybear looks like a bear on the outside but feels like a bunny on the inside. But soon he questions if his feelings are valid. Then he meets another and finds out that he isn't the only one that feels this way and forms a wonderful friendship with Grizzlybun. The illustrations are adorable!

This is one of my favorite children’s books until today. It’s wonderfully illustrated and it teaches good manners in a fun way. I like how Brother Bear and Sister Bear pretended to observe good manners in compliance with Mama Bear’s Politeness Plan but as time passed, they eventually ended up practicing good manners out of habit. I also like that the book showed that not even the grown-ups (such as Papa Bear) are exempted from the house rules.

I love to begin baking activities with children with a good book to get them excited and thinking ahead about our fun in the kitchen. Blueberries for Sal does exactly that!

I used to read this book to my kids before heading to a local farm to go blueberry or strawberry-picking in the summer months. Once home, we gathered our delectable harvest and baked a delicious berry crumble or cobbler! Extend the learning to different seasons by going apple-picking in the fall and making homemade apple pie, preserves, and applesauce.

Blueberries for Sal is a great story for teaching the whole process of farm-to-table. This book is also good for: learning about the seasons and the seasonality of produce; animal hibernation in winter; where we get blueberries (wild vs. farmed); the process of canning fruit; and mothers and their young.

The catchy sing-song rhyming text is a delight for both tongue and ear. Packed with alliteration, consonance, and nonsensical compound words, this book is a super fun read-aloud. The artwork is just as wild and surreal as the text, showcasing swaying toast trees, tumbling blueberry waterfalls, and bursting strawberry fireworks. Here are some of my favorite nonsense words found inside: Jamble, Canoeberry, Boomberry, Razzamatazzberry, Clickety-clackberry

Rachel Mazur was a wildlife biologist in Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks for many years. A core component of her job was “solving the bear problem”—generation upon generation of bears dependent on human food and ever more aggressive and crafty as they endeavored to satisfy this desire. Her story artfully weaves together the history of bear-human interactions in the Sierra, scientific research on bear habits and diets, and importantly sociology, especially people’s changing perception of acceptable wildlife management and visitors changing expectations of the attractions on offer in a national park. The book is skillfully written and thought-provoking, but also heartening as it ends with evidence that changing wildlife management and visitor actions mean bears are slowly becoming wilder again.

Lucy Bear is determined to make a friend, but it turns out to be a harder task than she anticipated. Her efforts startle, bother, annoy, and anger the other forest animals. She’s ready to give up but in the end, she finds a perfect friend—perfect for her, that is, and isn’t that what really matters? I adore Peter Brown’s colorful, jocular illustrations and the way the answer to Lucy’s desire is presented not in the text, but in the art. For a bonus friendship lesson, check out Brown’s bio on the dust jacket.