Changes

|title=Looking for Bear

|author=Holly Webb

|publisher=Scholastic

|date=September 2013

|website=http://www.holly-webb.com/

|summary=A sweet tale about two siblings on the hunt for the bear at the bottom of the garden.

}}

Young siblings Ben and Cassie have just moved into a new house with their dad. Their new world is exciting to explore, but they wish that dad wasn’t so busy all of the time. They have lots of things that they want to tell him, like how Ben is being excluded by his friends at school, how they discovered that the new builders are actually pirates, how Ben designed his own football comic strip and best of all, how they both discovered a bear living at the bottom of the garden...

The book discusses the issues surrounding bullying in a sensitive and intelligent way. Ben is ultimately able to resolve the problem by being true to himself, rather than trying to conform to what his peers expect him to be. It doesn’t stop the bully from trying to intimidate him, but he finds ways of dealing with the situation by creating his own coping mechanism. Slowly, one by one, other children start to join him and lunchtimes aren’t as scary anymore. I found this scenario a lot more realistic than the idea of the bully suddenly becoming nice, coming to a sticky end, or Ben magically acquiring football skills to wow his peers.

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