Book of Fairy-Tale Bears

Bears have prowled through human imagination for millennia, appearing in myths and tales across every culture. Yet rarely do they step from the margins into the spotlight. This collection gathers eighteen stories where the bear is not a passing presence but the soul of the tale: cunning, fierce, sometimes gentle, always magnetic. Here are tales of bears who outwit hunters, bears who befriend lost children, bears whose claws scratch at the door between the human world and something older and wilder. Clifton Johnson has assembled stories from traditions around the world, each one placing this magnificent animal at the center of wonder and danger. These are not the sweetened bears of modern picture books. They have teeth and fur, forest-smell and ancient logic. Some tales are gentle, others are dark. All of them remember what humanity once knew: that bears are kin to us, and strange, and not fully tamed.