Recently I read and discussed Father Bear Comes Home (because Sendak illustrated it). I was disappointed with it, but I wanted to see what more books by this team (Else Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak) were like.
As a result, I picked up A Kiss for Little Bear. It’s a 1968 beginning reader, so intentionally simple language presented to help beginning readers, but in this case, augmented not just any illustrations, but drawings by the great Maurice Sendak. And boy am I glad I gave them another chance.
Like Father Bear Comes Home, this book is simple, and focuses on relationships among family members and friends. In this case, though, there’s much more of a through line, a narrative that both engages in itself and gives reasons for the illustrations to be so very charming.
The premise is simple. Little Bear makes a drawing (of what looks like a Wild Thing). He sends it to Grandmother via Hen. Grandmother proudly hangs it on her wall, and gives Hen a kiss to take back to Little Bear. However, while Hen delivered the drawing herself, she passes the kiss on to Frog, But Frog stops to swim, so he passes it to Cat. But Cat wants to take a nap, so he passes it to Little Skunk. Little Skunk passes it to another skunk, but she passes it back to him and he to her again. This stalls the handoff until Hen passes and says, “Too much kissing,” There’s actually some discussion of who has the kiss now, but Hen eventually takes it back and, finally, gives it to Little Bear.
He tries to send one back, but Hen says no, that it’s too complicated.
The kissing skunks get married, Little Bear is the best man, and he makes them a drawing as a gift.
The story action is, as I mentioned above, simple. Any child could kiss, nap, or, ideally, swim. But they are put together into a wonderfully complex sequence that snarls at times, and even changes lives forever for the skunks. The sequence also gives Sendak opportunity after opportunity to charm us. He gives us different animals side by side–or nose to nose, kissing–and often in small but dramatic situations, like Cat squalling, either about having to get in the pond or because Frog is kissing him.
