Bear Adventure

Anthony McGowan's Bear Adventure is a wilderness story for 10 year olds about two cousins searching the Canadian forests for a missing plane.

What happens

Amazon's parents took off in a small plane weeks ago and never arrived. The authorities have given up. Her Uncle Hal hasn't. He runs TRACKS, a group that protects endangered animals, and he's flown Amazon and his son Frazer into the mountains to keep looking.

The book opens with Frazer, who's fourteen and knows more about wild animals than almost anyone his age, face to face with a wolverine carrying a wolf's leg in its mouth. He stops to take a photo. Big mistake. He sprints back to camp with it on his heels, and his dad and cousin fall about laughing because it's basically a large weasel!

That mix is what makes it work. The animal facts are real and fascinating (Hal can't resist a lecture), but the cousins tease each other constantly and the bear jokes are dreadful.

The best scene is at the lake. Amazon catches her very first fish, and then a honey-coloured mother bear and her cub walk out between the children and the shore. They're spirit bears, a rare pale kind of black bear. The children throw her the fish and hide in the floatplane, until the mother climbs on to the float and starts sniffing at the window. Why won't she go away? Amazon may have kept one trout back in her pocket.

There's a sadder, quieter thread too. Amazon is holding on to hope, and Hal isn't really someone you go to for a hug. Around the campfire he tells the story of a crash years ago, when he and Amazon's dad were young, and it's completely gripping.

A heads-up for squeamish readers. Hal's story describes a badly broken leg with the bone sticking out, and how he pushed it back into place out in the forest, in quite a lot of detail. A wolf pack follows them for days. A child who worries about parents going missing might find Amazon's situation hard too. Readers who love animals and real survival stuff will be hooked.

Amazon and Frazer have had adventures before this one (the book mentions Russia and a close call with squid), but you pick up everything you need as you go.

What to read next

For another young adventurer out in the wild with a bear whose reputation goes before her, try The Boy Who Saved a Bear. Nuwan sets off alone on a long journey, and everyone warns him about Karadi, a sloth bear with a splash of white on her paw.