Richard T. MorrisCritiques

From Kirkus: "To quote one particularly joyous double-page spread, 'Oh, what a ride!'"

The Bear Came Along is a humorous award winning picture book about a bear and his journey meeting all its friends. This book would be a good read aloud or a book to have on shelves in an elementary school classroom. This book can show students the value of friendships and they can enjoy the beautiful illustrations along the way.

This is a Caldecott Honor Book about a bear who is exploring a flowing river. As the bear flows down the river he gathers other animal friends until they all fall down a waterfall. This is one of my favorite books and I would love to have in my future primary classroom. The illustrations are perfection and worth having a conversation with students having what they notice and wonder about the pictures in this book! A simple read which would be great for beginning readers or as a read aloud with the class.

-Something I notice about the relationship between the mood, setting, time, or feeling and the technique and colors used is that it is all working together to create a more full picture of love and community which is the point of the book. The soft colors create a welcoming atmosphere.
-It is both horizontal and vertical formatting! When they fall down the waterfall it turns vertical and this creates the illusion of height.
-The end papers are blue.
-The title page has a simple illustration of the river and the bear which is where the story starts.
-There are a few pages that only illustrate what is going on and there are no words.
-One of the visual elements used by the artist is value. There is quite a lot of blank white space. This creates a lighter tone of emotion.

I would totally use this in younger classrooms to help demonstrate the importance of diversity.

A very colorful book brings to life a sense of adventure and making friends in the most unexpected places. A great book to use at the beginning of a school year to teach about making friends for going on a adventure throughout the school year together an hanging on to those friendships to have each others backs.

This book was pretty cute and would be a good addition to a classroom library. It could be used for a fun read-aloud for Kindergarten or 1st grade. It could be an opener for a unit about rivers or forest animals. I love the fun colors that are in the book.

I'm kind of a sucker for characters that don't play by the narrator's rules.

Genre
Picture books for children
Tone
Funny
Subject
Ambition
Astronauts
Film producers and directors
Filmmaking
Moose
Character
Anthropomorphic
Exaggerated

I always enjoy LeUyen Pham's artwork. The artwork is great. I just don't particularly enjoy the story. The text tries too hard to stick to a specific format/pattern. The story tries too hard to teach a lesson. The whole thing fell flat for me. I would have enjoyed it much more as a wordless picture book and would have given it 4 stars in that case.

This Caldacott honor book deserves all the praise it has received. We start with a river. Then the bear comes along. Then the Frog, and so on, and so on. Each animal/s helping the other and learning to lean when needed. The Illustrations are amazing. They propel the story and rev the excitement for the big finish. It all blends together beautifully.

In Bear Came Along, Richard T. Morris writes in his picture book about a group of animals that go on a river journey and test their bravery. Morris got his inspiration for the children’s novel from his first overnight camping adventure, where he learned about friendship and sharing fun times with friends. I thought the best part of the book was the illustrations and I really enjoyed the expressions on the animals’ faces.

Once there was a river flowing through a forest. The river didn't know it could have all these adventures until a bear came along. But Bear wasn't alone. A frog, turtles, beaver, racoons, and duck tag along. These very different animals didn't know they needed each other until the river came along. I think this is a good story about friendship and would be perfect to read to an elementary classroom.

Absolutely hilarious. Loved it!

A big bear, who goes on adventures but not alone, with turtles, beaver, racoons, and duck because adventures just aren’t fun alone, this takes place in a forest following a river downstream. This book is used for celebrating going on journeys with friends and not going through things alone, this is very important because in the classroom students often feel as if they embark on their educational journey alone. This is a good book to implement into the classroom to help students find their voice and realize teamwork makes the dreamwork. This is a good book to read and is very useful for grades 4-8.

This book is so cute! Bear falls into a river, and along the way he makes friends, that then join him in the river to. None of them know where they will end up but enjoy each others company and making memories along the way. At the end they come to a waterfall and all hold on to each other as they go down the waterfall. It is a simple, cute picture book. To me it showcases that friends can be made in the most unexpected times, and the importance of friendship.

The book " Bear Came Along" by Richard T. Morris is a great book about the importance of friendship for kindergarten and first grade readers. This book is about a bear who fell into a river and picked up new animals along the way. Because there were so many animals on the log in the river, they were able to help each other when they fell down the waterfall. I really enjoyed tis book and would use this to teach my students about the value of friendship.

I love this cute picture book! This book is about a bear flowing through the river and many animals slowly come along for the ride. The animals did not know what to expect along the way, but they enjoyed every moment of it! This book is intended for an audience who loves nature!

This is a bright and informational book with great illustrations for elementary children. This story begins with just a bear traveling down a river who picks up different animal friends as he makes his way down the river. I think this would be a great book for a science class who are studying ecosystems because it take into account all the different plants and animals that live along the river.

While the art is visually exciting at times, the story didn't really do much aside from pile on more animals page after page.

Unrelated to my rating, I was a bit frustrated because this is the first time I have tried reading a picture book on the library ebook app, Libby. I didn't have the orientation set up correctly and kept getting only half of the two-page spreads at a time. I corrected that for a second run-through, but then the pictures were pretty small on my iPad. Ebooks are okay in a (cornavirus) pinch, but I prefer a big paper book that can be spread across my lap or held up high for all to see.

This story begins with a river that didn't know it was a river until Bear came along. Once Bear comes along, more and more animals join each other on a log and float along the river. They eventually have to hold onto each other as they fall down a waterfall. All of these animals lived their own lives until they actually met each other on the river and helped each other survive the harrowing experience of the waterfall.

The colors in this book are awe-inducing. Each element is drawn so well and colored so intricately that the reader can easily identify everything in the pictures, and nothing clashes with one another. Each part of the beautiful scenery stands out so well. I love animals and enjoyed reading about all the animals in their natural habitat. I also liked the feeling of suspense that comes with all the animals on one log awaiting the fall at the end of the river and the happiness the animals felt after they were all okay. I think the message is an important one--community and the value of friendship. Sometimes we forget that others exist and that it is perfectly fine to receive assistance from others when needed. We as people need to swallow our pride and learn that we are all in this life together.

This children's book is about a bear who falls into a river and ends up floating down it on a log towards a waterfall. During the adventure, he runs into animals who were all different, but they all end up connecting in the end. I gave this book 5 stars because it taught a good lesson and it was beautifully illustrated as well. This book can be used in any classroom at any different age level to show that everyone has their own individual strengths and weakness, but we don't have to let that stop us from becoming friends.

I loved the illustrations and the fun adventure down the river.

Richard T. Morris's picture book entitled Bear Came Along is about a bear who falls into a river and winds up going on an unplanned adventure. Bear meets quite a few different animals along the way, and they all balance each other out on their trip down the river. The moral of the story is that humans have differing personalities, just as Bear had differing animals joining him on his adventure down the river, and that it is our differences that keep the world in balance. I found this book to be a peaceful book to read, and I also found multiple ways I could connect it to instruction. For instance, the illustrations and word choice in this picture book could be excellent for teaching questioning and finding text evidence in a story. Also, this story shows excellent examples of compound and complex sentences, which could be great for a grammar lesson. I would read this book to my future fifth or sixth graders. As I said, a notable characteristic about this book would have to be the illustrations, they are beautiful and provide great context clues for what is happening in the story; I found it to be an enjoyable and peaceful read.

https://www.hbook.com/?detailStory=bear-came-along

A delightful story of an eventful trip down a river - and over a waterfall. Everyone learns something from someone else - even the river.

Includes Author's Note, Artist's Note

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Re-read July 2021. The use of color to draw the reader's attention is particularly effective. At first, only the river is bright turquoise, with the rest of the forest and its creatures in soft black or dark brown; each character who is introduced arrives in color (brown bear, green frog, cool multicolored turtles, etc.) until the whole scene is full of blues, greens, and pops of yellow, pink, and purple. The use of various perspectives - including one spread from the animals' POV just as they're about to go over the waterfall - is clever and effective, and there is one spread with a portrait orientation, requiring the reader to turn the book 90 degrees. Overall a delight, good for storytime or one-on-one.

This book is a really fun look at the sheep that help you get to sleep. 101 has tripped and fallen into the fence, but he insists that the sheep keep going they have to get the reader to sleep. The illustrations are just as much fun as the prose. This would make a good page to stage read.