1. Animals
2. Courage
3. Cruelty
4. Emotions
5. Fear
6. Freedom
7. History
8. Imagery
9. Myths and legends
10. Perspectives

There are at least four visual and textual narratives in this picture book, all narratives exploring the nature of cruelty against nonhumans, the value of myth creation and the interplay between visual and verbal, spoken and unspoken. The ending of the book presents multiple possible readings, ultimately all deeply anthropocentric. The first half of the book contains simple text, some in shape (or concrete) poetic form, and the second half of the book presents full bleed double page spreads.

Beginning with the generic ‘Once there was a bear’, Gleeson’s text deftly outlines the sad life of a bear kept in poor conditions and forced to perform for humans. In the first half of the book, Greder’s characteristic bold outline, thickly stroked and muted colour palette in charcoal and pastel establish the chronograph for the story as medieval. In contrast to the larger colour images, the use of white space in the lower left part of verso pages in first half of the book shows the pencil-sketched bear as small and white (innocence) when humans are the focus of the illustrations; then the bear is dark and in shadow; then at the end she is light again. Perspective and gaze shift from human to bear throughout.

The wordless double page spreads have strong visual allusions to Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’. A layered story, the historical context mixed with mythical elements challenges readers to find parallels in modern 21st century life (how do we treat humans and other animals?; in what ways do humans make all other animals ‘dance’ against their nature?). Suffering and cruelty are used within a mythological framework as one reading of the ending is that the bear attains mythical freedom as the constellation Ursa Major.

Winner of the Bologna Ragazzi award fiction for children 2000, Short listed for 2000 CBCA Picture Book of the Year

1. Walker Books Teacher’s notes https://static-readingaustralia-com-au.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/TeachingNotes_The_Great_Bear_LGleeson_AGreder.pdf
2. Copyright Agency Reading Australia Teacher’s notes includes links for northern hemisphere astronomical information, animal welfare organisations and links to two short videos (Note: the World Animal Protection USA video contains some very distressing material) https://readingaustralia.com.au/lesson/the-great-bear/
3. Some earlier editions of the book include an afterword by Gleeson and Greder. For those editions that do not include these notes, Gleeson has commented on the process of writing the book on her website under the title ‘The Great Bear V the school reader’ http://www.libbygleeson.com.au/docs/The%20Great%20Bear%20V%20the%20school%20reader.pdf
4. Kirkus Reviews, review of ‘The Great Bear’, 12 July 2011 https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/libby-gleeson/great-bear/
5. World Animal Protection, ‘Bear Facts’ Information on bears in the northern hemisphere from this Australian charity https://www.worldanimalprotection.org.au/education/animal-facts/bears
6. UK Bear Conservation charity on the history of bear ‘dancing’, includes a short summary http://www.bearconservation.org.uk/dancing-bears/
7. Voiceless: Animal Protection Education. To continue a critical discussion of the issue of animals being exploited for human entertainment in contemporary settings, older students can consider some of the resources from the Australian animal welfare organisation, Voiceless. For instance, there are high school resources exploring international animal cruelty laws and dolphins in captivity https://voiceless.org.au/schools/dolphins-in-captivity/