You know, I think this is the first book I bought for Eddie new. He was just gone one at the time, and believe me, he had no shortage of books. Some were presents, the rest were picked up at assorted car boot sales and sales of work and such. But this one appealed to me because of the title, which was of the loud and raucous old campfire call-and-response poem we’d chanted in scouts, and the illustrations, which are gorgeous. 

The story has four children and their Dad heading off on the titular bear hunt, steadily marching through the assorted obstacles which confront them (grass, river, mud, wood) with attendant sound effects. There’s a chorus repeated, a description of the obstacle and then the noisy march, all to be chanted rhythmically until finally the bear is found and the family flee back through each obstacle until they get safely back under the covers of their bed and the bear goes back to his cave.

I’ve heard more than one parent complain about Going On A Bear Hunt. ‘Oh yeah it’s great,’ they say, ‘Until you’ve done it about a hundred times.’ And, well, yes, it’s the sort of thing that can get old fast for a grown-up while remaining a perpetual favourite of the child. At first the repetitive nature of the words are mitigated by the beautiful illustrations, full of charm and personality, but even that’s got to pale for after a while.

Eddie and I certainly read Bear Hunt A LOT, and we did so loudly and quickly, especially at the end when the pace can get quite breathless. Casual visitors were often startled by the energy we put into it, but that’s what made it fun. I never really got sick of it, though, because it was never Eddie’s only book, though for a long time it was his favourite, so if you really didn’t want to read it to him, there were always plenty of others to choose from.

He’s two and a half now, and almost never asks for it, though he’ll take it if it’s offered. Lately he’s become a bit more ambivalent about the role of the bear. Now he has a slightly better grasp of stories and how they work, the realisation has dawned that the bear is the villain of the piece, and I don’t think he entirely approves. Between Goldilocks and The Three Bears, Jill Murphy’s Peace At Last and a few others, including Bear in the Big Blue House, bears, as far as he’s concerned, are the good guys. Certainly, when he gets to the last wordless double page spread of the bear trudging along the moonlit beach to his cave, head bowed, all alone, his sympathy is definitely with the bear.

‘Poor bear,’ he said when I read it to him today. ‘He lost his dinner.’