{"id":780,"date":"2022-06-14T09:56:37","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T13:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/?page_id=780"},"modified":"2022-06-14T09:56:37","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T13:56:37","slug":"review-bear-outside","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/review-bear-outside\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Bear Outside"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maughn Rollins Gregory<\/p>\n

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Review of Bear Outside <\/em>by Jane Yolen (New York: Neal Porter Books, 2021).<\/p><\/div><\/p><\/div>\n

One of the meditations Zen master Th\u00edch Nh\u1ea5t H\u1ea1nh wrote for children includes the lines, \u201cBreathing in, I see myself as a flower. \/ Breathing out, I feel fresh. \/ Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain. \/ Breathing out, I feel solid\u201d (1992:11). He teaches that it\u2019s important \u201cto keep our \u2018flowerness\u2019 alive and present,\u201d and that by breathing in \u2018mountain\u2019 and breathing out solid\u2019, \u201cyou will see that you are stronger than you thought\u201d (1992:12,16).<\/p>\n

Jane Yolen\u2019s 400th book for children begins with the unnamed narrator, a girl perhaps nine years old, confiding that \u201cSome folks have a lion inside, \/ or a tiger. \/ Not me. \/ I wear my bear on the outside.\u201d In simple but compelling gouache images by Jen Corace, we see the girl walking on a street, sitting in her school classroom, hanging on a grocery shopping cart, and riding a bicycle; but in each image, the figure of the girl is surrounded by that of a giant, tawny bear.<\/p>\n

In their first image, the girl\/bear walk past other children who leer, laugh, and stick a tongue out at her. She narrates: \u201cI wear my bear on the outside. \/ It\u2019s like wearing a suit of armor. \/ It keeps out the howls, \/ the growls. \/ She keeps me safe.\u201d Nowhere in the book is the bear depicted as menacing or even angry. She typically wears a half-smile, reflecting the girl\u2019s own expression. The girl is kept safe from the bullies, not by putting on a ferocious countenance, but by summoning the kind of self-understanding and self-trust that makes their taunts ineffectual. When do I need to show up as Bear? As Flower?<\/p>\n

In other images the girl\/bear laugh openly, as when \u201cI\u2019m in charge \/ riding my bike \/ to the stop sign. \/ Or if I like, \/ roller-skating. \/ Or bouncing \/ on the trampoline.\u201d If I wore a bear outside today, what would I do differently? What risks might I be willing to take? In a contrasting image, the girl\/bear sit in a school classroom where the teacher is asking a question, and though the girl looks down at her desk, the bear lifts her head and raises her paw to respond. Can part of me be confident at the same time that another part of me is self-doubting\u2014about the same thing? In another image the girl reaches to the bear from a swimming pool but the bear crouches in fear. \u201cOnly not at swimming lessons. \/ That can be dangerous \/ for both of us.\u201d If I know I am capable of bear energy, are there times it\u2019s better to let that energy sleep?<\/p>\n

Halfway through the book \u201cmy bear\u201d becomes \u201cBear,\u201d whom the girl understands, not as something she wears outside but a being outside herself. (Some readers follow the girl\u2019s mother in taking Bear to be an imaginary friend.) In one image girl and Bear sit side by side under a canopy of blankets, each absorbed in reading a different book. In another, the girl\/Bear sit at the dinner table where \u201cwe share a plate. \/ I like chicken, \/ Bear likes salad. \/ We don\u2019t always agree, \/ Bear and me.\u201d Even young children experience disagreement among their inner selves, which is one of many metaphors for the idea that what we think of as individuality is actually complex: we can recognize distinct parts of ourselves with different, sometimes conflicting tendencies, needs, genders, skills. Sometimes these parts do seem to come from outside ourselves. How can I choose between the deep desires of different parts of me that I value equally?<\/p>\n

Then again, not all of our inner selves are good company. People of every age have \u2018demons\u2019 \u2013 inner selves driven by fear, anger, loneliness, and pride. The notion of inner conflict and a \u2018divided self\u2019 was a prominent theme in ancient philosophy. Surely, part of what it means to \u201cKnow thyself\u201d is to be aware when these selves begin to manifest and to know how to take care of them. (Nh\u1ea5t H\u1ea1nh recommends holding an angry, lonely, or otherwise troubled inner self like a crying baby and reassuring it, \u2018It\u2019s OK that you are here, I will take care of you\u2019.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI take care \/ of Bear, \/ and Bear \/ takes care of me.\u201d These lines and the image of the girl and Bear bowing toward each other and touching noses, remind us that those parts of ourselves we trust and value have to be nurtured, cultivated. Nh\u1ea5t H\u1ea1nh reminds us, \u201csometimes our flowerness is tired and needs to be revived\u201d (1992:12). If I recognize parts of me\u2014or of family members or friends\u2014that are dear, that I rely on, how do I take good care of them?<\/p>\n

Bear Outside is a philosophical fable that, like all good fables, raises intriguing questions that can be doorways to wisdom.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/p>\n

Nh\u1ea5t H\u1ea1nh, Th\u00edch (1992) Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living, pp. 10-20. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maughn Rollins Gregory One of the meditations Zen master Th\u00edch Nh\u1ea5t H\u1ea1nh wrote for children includes the lines, \u201cBreathing in, I see myself as a flower. \/ Breathing out, I feel fresh. \/ Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain. \/ Breathing out, I feel solid\u201d (1992:11). He teaches that it\u2019s important \u201cto keep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":177,"parent":0,"menu_order":73,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-780","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":782,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/780\/revisions\/782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}