The Dancing Bear

Description

A gentle and deeply moving story of a young girl and her bear, told with great charm by a master storyteller. High in the mountains, in a tiny village, an abandoned bear cub is adopted by a lonely orphan child. Soon they are inseparable, beloved by the whole village -- safe, until the arrival of a glamorous film crew who need a dancing bear...

Michael divides his time between his writing and running Farms for City Children, a charity which each year takes up to 3,000 children to a working farm for a week. Michael and his wife Clare were awarded MBEs this year for their work with the charity. Before the first farm opened 22 years ago, Morpurgo was a teacher and his knowledge of children's experiences, plus his experience of farms enrich his writing enormously. Michael Morpurgo has won the Whitbread Children's Book Award, and the Smarties Book Prize.

It's rare to find a story that combines so successfully a contemporary plot and modern morality with a feel for legend and fairy tale. She Magazine