The Deliverance of Dancing Bears (Aspca Henry Bergh Children's Book Awards (Awards)) [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Stanley (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 6 and up | Grade Level: 1 and up | Series: Aspca Henry Bergh Children's Book Awards (Awards)

In her cage, the dancing bear dreams of a life of freedom. Instead, she is chained and forced to dance in the village square each day until a kind old man makes her dream a reality. The simple text is accompanied by beautiful color drawings to enable the reader to appreciate the culture and landscape surrounding the dancing bears.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 2-5-A 1995 Australian Picture Book of the Year honor winner. In this thought-provoking and sincere story, Stanley presents the plight of the dancing bears of Turkey and Greece whom she first witnessed in 1979. Constructing a "contemporary fable" from her experience, the author tells the story of a captive bear whose dreams of freedom sustain her, even while being forced to perform in a Turkish marketplace by a cruel and angry keeper. During the quiet hours when she is confined to her cage, the bear imagines a different life in which she is free to wander through mountain streams and sleep lazily with her cubs. The degradation continues until the day an old peasant with a generous and empathetic spirit offers to buy her, releasing her from her chains. The somber and meaningful tone of the text underscores the author's purposeful intent without over-sentimentalizing. Large-scale, highly textured illustrations in a rich palette of purples, blues, red, and gold effectively convey the bear's hardships as well as her dreams. An author's note explains that the animals are now protected; even so, this book provides a compelling springboard toward many important topics including cruelty to animals, freedom versus captivity, and the sustaining power of dreams.
Teri Markson, Stephen S. Wise Temple Elementary School, Los Angeles
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 2-4, younger for reading aloud. In Turkey, a large brown bear is forced to dance in the marketplace by her cruel keeper Haluk. One day, an old man, Yusuf, buys the bear and takes her home to live in the large forest next to his cottage. Months later, Yusuf returns to the market to find Haluk abusing another bear--a young cub. Yusuf buys the cub, introducing it to the first bear in the forest, and he praises the villagers when they finally spurn Haluk's actions. The language is mostly simple and well paced, with a few sophisticated exceptions, and the detailed, colorful pastel drawings, printed across double-page spreads, will show well to a crowd, although the lengthy text may limit read-aloud potential. The story's heavy messages may also encourage children to reflect on other ways animals in contemporary society are exploited for entertainment. In the postscript, Stanley shares her own experiences with mistreated dancing bears and gives contact information for the World Society for the Protection of Animals. Karen Hutt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 6 and up
  
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Kane/Miller Book Publishers (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1929132417
• ISBN-13: 978-1929132416
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,375,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Deliverance of Dancing Bears, June 18, 2000

By 

Colin Kenworthy (Perth, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Deliverance of Dancing Bears (Hardcover)

"The Deliverance of Dancing Bears" tells the story ofan unnamed bear that is taken every day by its "owner" to amarket square in a mountain village of eastern Turkey and set to dance on its hind legs for hours. Elizabeth Stanley's prose makes clear to young readers that this is not really dancing. "Around and around the poor bear turned on her two back legs, her head pulled from side to side by the chain which Haluk jangled to the clatter of his tambourine... The performance continued relentlessly for many hours until day began to fade [and] Haluk led the bear back to her cage and lock[ed] the door." Stanley's pastel illustrations in purple, blue, gold, scarlet and indigo evoke the liveliness of Turkish village life as people go about their ordinary business of shopping, eating and paying the bearkeeper to see dancing bear. The overall effect of these village scenes, however, is depressing. The heavily textured paper to which the pastels are applied seems to drain the light out of these sad market scenes, in which no-one seems to smile.

The power of the book, however, comes from the scenes that depict the dreams of the chained bear. The scenes that show her fishing in mountain streams with her mate or lying lazily with her babies in the sun are full of shimmering light and vibrant energy.

And thankfully, the bear's dreams come true. An old man named Yusuf buys the bear from Haluk, takes it with him to his house by a stream and slowly reintroduces it to the wild. And that is just the beginning of this eloquently written and superbly illustrated book dedicated to relieving the suffering of captive bears.

Stanley saw her first "dancing bear" in 1979 in Athens and decided then to write a book to challenge the assumption that men could cruelly use wild animals to make money. In 1992 she took her written text to Turkey to take photos and to make sketches for the artwork. In the same year The World Society for the Protection of Animals effected the release and the return to the wild of all chained bears in Turkey. Today there are no dancing bears in Greece or Turkey.

But a recent WISPA report has revealed that the trade in dancing bears is still alive and well in India. It says that "60-70% of cubs taken from the wild die before they even begin their brutal training. Dehydration, starvation and trauma are all reasons [for their dying]. Should the cub be lucky enough to live, a punishing regime of starvation and beating will begin to condition it to perform. The piercing of the cub's sensitive muzzle with a rope for control is the next ordeal. It is held down without anaesthetic while a crude iron needle is heated in a coal fire and plunged in with a group of men holding the squealing cub tight. The investigators also found that the site of the nose piercing was invariably infected in all the seventeen cases observed. 'The cub would the have to suffer a second piercing before the first was healed, compounding his agony,' explained Geete Seshamani. 'The tug of this rope, along with an intense fear of the strike of a heavy stick, motivates the bear to lift its legs in turn and 'dance'.'"

The WISPA site also provides gory and even more gruesome details of bearbaiting in Pakistan and of the farming of bears for bear bile in China.

WISPA has done and will continue to provide facts about animal mistreatment and about campaigns and projects to challenge these abuses. Whilst it is important for the thinking public to have access to information like that on the WISPA site, I believe that Elizabeth Stanley's "The Deliverance of Dancing Bears" is one of the best books for introducing pre-school, elementary and junior high school aged children to these issues.

While not so sparsely written as Anthony Browne's "Gorilla", the prose is tight. The illustrations are similar to and as powerful as those in Brian Wildsmith's animal books. The interleaving of reality and dream is reminiscent of Shirley Hughes' "Stay Away from the Water Shirley" or of the more recently published "Magic Beach" by Alison Lester. All in all, this is an ideal book to get the young and the not-so-young thinking about animal rights issues. It is a beautiful book that can help us all to realise the epigraph that Stanley has taken from Aristotle: "Hope is a waking dream."

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An original and involving parable, September 12, 2003

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Deliverance of Dancing Bears (Hardcover)

Named an honor book of The Children's Book Council of Australia, The Deliverance Of Dancing Bears is a wonderful picture book story written by Elizabeth Stanley for young readers having intermediate level reading skills. This very highly recommended account is about a captive bear who forced to dance, and who clings to hope, even though the degradations of her daily life cause her spirit to ebb. It is a kind-hearted peasant who liberates the bear and who reminds all of those watching of an important moral lesson about dignity and life. Elizabeth Stanley's touching and emotional color artwork highlights and enhances her original and involving parable.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well done and compassionate., July 3, 2009

By 

Sunny Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Deliverance of Dancing Bears (Aspca Henry Bergh Children's Book Awards (Awards)) (Hardcover)

This is a children's book with text and illustrations to tell the story.
If you have any compassion for exploited animals you will appreciate this touching book for our young readers. I feel the book is important to teach morals at an early age. The dancing bear trade is a cruel practice. Apparently the author witnessed this during her foreign travels and decided to make use of her authorship on the subject. She explains this briefly at the end of her book.