Review by Booklist Review
Ages 3-6. Uh-oh! A little girl loses her bear--as in her very favorite stuffed animal!! Too busy to help, her mother suggests she "try to think like a detective." When this leaves her clueless, the girl's older sister suggests she close her eyes and throw one of her other stuffed animals. "Sometimes it lands in the same place." Yeah, right. But then our heroine gives it a "one-last-extra-special-I-really-mean-it-this-time throw." And . . . well, something unexpected happens. Feiffer is an absolute master at humorously capturing, in his text and especially in his wonderful, nervous line drawings, the incidental angst and the marvelous melodrama that make up a child's everyday life. Children will find his latest book even better than a stuffed bear. Honest! (Reviewed April 1, 1998)0688151477Michael Cart
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2A picture book with lots of child appeal. When a young girl loses her best toy, she plays detective to find it. After consulting other family members to no avail, she follows her sister's suggestion to throw another stuffed animal on the chance that it will land in the same place. The ploy uncovers lots of other lost items but no bear. The mystery is solved when the child goes to bed and her mother lifts up the covers. Hand-lettered text, dialogue balloons, and the breezy line of Feiffer's recognizable style of illustration form the perfect vehicle for this familiar story. The first-person voice realistically conveys the narrator's emotions and dilemma in a way to which children will relate. Effective use of comic-strip panels and frames along with double-page spreads heighten the tension and build to the satisfying conclusion. Both girl and story are winners.Julie Cummins, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
With great comic insight, Feiffer captures the high drama that ensues when a child misplaces a beloved possession. Feiffer's loose-lined cartoon style effectively blends text and illustration for optimum comic timing; the varying perspectives and size and placement of the frames extends the narrative drama as well as the characters' emotions. A very funny and affectionate family satire, raised almost to the scale of full-blown grand opera. From HORN BOOK Fall 1998, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Following her mother's advice to ``think like a detective,'' a desperate child searches her gloriously cluttered room and everywhere else for her lost bear. Naturally, it turns up at bedtimewaiting under the sheets. Like Feiffer's cartoons, this is not for short attention spans, as the search is prolonged and wordy; still, so intense is the child's concentration that sometimes the background vanishes and she seems to burst out of the story to peer along the surfaces of the pages, and children, at least, will enjoy surveying the immense haul of toys, clothes, books, animals, and rubble littering the shelves, floor, and bed. An energetically drawn, comically exaggerated reprise of a universal domestic experience. (Picture book. 6-8)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
