This week: Bear and Wolf by Daniel Salmieri
I spotted the gorgeous and somewhat haunting cover of this book out of the corner of my eye, so to speak —in the lists of bests and greats that pop up and scroll by my online reading and shopping. The bookseller algorithms and bots know me well by now. I’m a lover of bears and wolves, and a big fan of Daniel Salmieri's totally laugh-out-loud collaborations with Adam Rubin (Dragons Love Tacos, Secret Pizza Party and more). And I have a wolf book of my own.
I needed this book.
Occasionally there are perfect picture books; this is one of those. Bear and Wolf is a gentle, magnificent read-aloud, with artwork that transports you to snowy woods and vast clearings — the animals’ domain. The endpapers open to snow, and right away you witness from the perspective of Bear, and then Wolf, an encounter. For each other they are at first merely “something poking out from the glistening white,” the way snow can encompass a solitary traveler and create a kind of muffling of the senses. Bear and Wolf approach each other and see a bit more of the other’s features. And then a question, a back and forth—
Spread from Bear and Wolf by Daniel Salmieri | Image is from the author/illustrator’s website
Are you lost?
What a giant question! Or maybe not, as each explains to the other that the purpose of their walk is just to be in this storm, to feel their way through it. Why not walk together? So they do, and the winter world continues to reveal itself in beautiful and unexpected ways. The companionship of the shared walk seems to activate a sensory experience. They smell the trees, listen to the snow, watch the ice. They walk until it’s time to return to their familiar lives and duties, and then part ways in an expansive wild place, the ‘great clearing in the woods’ that has already been revealed to be something else under the snow covering. Their parting scene is rendered with the subtlest markings of blue and violet —maybe graphite and colored pencil—over a white ground. It’s one of the most subtly beautiful picture book spreads I’ve ever seen.
