Catherine Walters’ book, When Will it be Spring, is the charming story of a mother bear and her cub looking forward to spring as they get ready to hibernate. Written for children 2-6 years old, the book begins with Mom and her cub, Alfie, as autumn arrives in a beautiful mountainous site near a lake. The leaves are falling as Mom beckons Alfie into their cave to sleep until “the flowers come out and the bees and the butterflies are hovering overhead.” A fox and squirrel look on.
The story line is simple and endearing. Alfie, anxious for the arrival of spring, snuggles down to sleep but awakes and thinks spring has come because he sees a butterfly (that turns out to be a bat.) Mother bear brings him back into the cave, but three more times Alfie awakes and thinks it is spring. Finally, when a tiny stream of water touches his nose, Alfie jumps up, awakens his mom and she sees that, indeed, spring has arrived. Poor exhausted Alfie goes outside and falls asleep in a field of flowers.
The book is full of little details that make it special. The love between mother and cub, the presence of various forest wildlife in most scenes, and the beautiful rendering of plant leaves, branches, buds and flowers, all come together to create an appealing and harmonious picture of the change of seasons from the view point of bears and their animal companions. When Will it be Spring was first published in 1997 but is as captivating now as it was then.
To buy When Will it be Spring from Amazon, click here.
about a bear cub and his mother who are getting ready to hibernate. The baby bear keeps waking up, seeing signs (he thinks) of spring outside, but his mother keeps telling him to go back to sleep; spring isn’t here yet. Throughout the story, readers are introduced to the various signs of spring.
The little bear, Alfie, is like any normal kid at bedtime (made me think of the Frances books illustrated by Garth Williams), and the images of butterflies versus bats/snow, and birds versus ice, and so on, are clever without being contrived.
As Alfie wakes up early throughout the story, he sees many signs of winter that he mistakes for spring. Once spring finally arrives, Alfie is so sleepy that he falls asleep in a field of spring flowers. Th
first published in 1997
Alfie’s eagerness and his mother’s patience a
beautiful world of misty mountains and autumn leaves, winter’s first snow in a peaceful pine forrest, spring flowers along the shores of a glassy alpine lak