posted on 01 Aug 2024

The Bear Who Had Nothing To Wear by Jeanne Willis and Brian Fitzgerald

We may not all spend every day thinking about the clothes we choose to buy and wear and what those choices say about us but it’s undeniably the case that what we wear is a statement to the world about our identity. The clothes we select may be statements about our gender, our status in society, our occupation, our aspirations and our sense of fun or ceremony.

Most of us gravitate to clothes that make us feel like our ‘real’ selves – even if there are times when we have to adopt alternative personas in some kind of public performance. Finding your ‘real self’ is something we can only gradually develop as we get old enough to be aware that we use our clothes as a signal to the other people of how we want to be seen. And that is the key idea behind Jeanne Willis’ delightful, rhymed story of The Bear Who Had Nothing To Wear.

When Albie the teddy bear bursts out into his new home from his box and wrapping, like most teddy bears, he’s gloriously naked as nature intended. But that’s not going to cut it for Albie:

“There was a bear who had NOTHING to wear,

And normally, teddy bears don’t really care,

They’re happy to dress how YOU want them to dress,

But Albie was not, I’m bound to confess.”

And so our chubby little bear sets out on a quest to discover his true identity through his choice of clothes. Does he want to be ‘a daddy bear, mummy or baby?’. Maybe a storybook Prince, a Fairy Queen, a cowboy, a pirate? He even tries his hand at being a big city businessman commuting on a train or even a tweed-clad country gentleman. But it’s obvious that none of these are his real self at all.

I can tell you that Albie finally discovers exactly what he was meant to be: but I’m not telling you what that is because you’ll want to find out for yourself.

Brian Fitzgerald’s colourful illustrations bring Albie’s quest for identity to life on big, generous pages that will appeal to younger readers and which lend themselves to using at a story time in a classroom setting.

Originally published in 2023, the paperback from Scallywag Press can be obtained from your local independent bookshop – who will be happy to order you a copy if they don’t have it on their shelves.

 

Terry Potter

August 2024