Must Be a Brown Bear Thing: Albert's Tree

Albert's Tree by Jenni Desmond

The Brown Bear love really started with the master of all brown bears, Brown Bear himself, the star of Brown Bear. This was, afterall, Chum's first two word phrase. So when he picked up Albert's Tree at the library today, I had a feeling it would be a winner.

Chum loved Albert so much, he even got a kiss in full Chum style (which is actually just a gentle headbutt). The book hinges on the mystery of the sad tree and the animal attempts to cheer the tree up. The big reveal comes when we find out that the tree is not actually crying. Instead, an owl is hiding in fear of a big furry monster, aka Albert. Chum was delighted to find that his THIRD favorite animal was making a debut, as he joyously yelled, "OWL!" 

Yet, we spent the most time returning to the page where Albert hangs from a tree branch. Each time he flipped to this page, Chum turned the book upside down so that Albert's face was right side up. As I think about his evolving book-handling skills and growing schema, I love his awareness that the image of the bear needs to be righted and that he can control this by rotating the book. So much fun to see his wheels turning.

Multimodal Elements: The text includes phrasing and sound effects within the images that elaborate the action in the printed text. 

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Quality reading spot

Confusion over Albert's inverted status

Headbutting his approval