Just So Stories

Walker Books

September 2024

Imprint: Flying Eye Books

ISBN13:9781838741617

Australia RRP:$29.99

New Zealand RRP:$32.99

Oh how I LOVE Owen Davey’s books! Sadly, I don’t always get sent all of them 😦 and I wish I had , because my nerdy inner child just adores his retro style and his fascinating facts. There are now about eight in this series I believe and each one would be equally captivating for your Littles.

This one makes me almost wish I was back in my first couple of years teaching when we ran a unit of inquiry for our Year 1s on Bears. It was so much fun and so much learning as our Smalls began their discovery of fiction vs nonfiction, and the beginning of writing informational texts. This would have been the pièce de résistance in that exercise. Now, with almost all the joy sucked out of teaching, no body does thematic work but that’s another tale altogether.

So, onto the bears, who have always been one of my favourites in every sense. Once more, Owen begins with basics of anatomy and historical development from the earliest appearance of bears, long before humans arrived on the scene and moves on to examine each aspect of bearish life. From growth to feeding, from torpor to birthing and from sizes to habitats.

There is a highly amusing double spread on ‘awards’ for special attributes such as pandas having the longest tail and sunbears (despite being the smallest species) having both the longest claws and the longest tongue. I also love the double spread showing the relative sizes of bears and the one that has the lifesize illustration of the polar bear’s head and the sun bear’s (you definitely wouldn’t fit a Kodiak’s lifesized head on a page, I’m sure!).

All in all, it’s another fascinating animal book that will be of huge interest to your readers from around 6/7 up to late primary and with the most stylish illos imaginable.

I really hope Owen Davey has plans for more because this series is truly sensational. I’m giving it a roaring 5 🐻🐻🐻🐻🐻 rating.

And though it has nothing to do with small children, I can’t let a bear reference go by without paying homage to the late, great Jimmy Buffet and one of my absolute favourites of his songs. RIP Jimmy, thanks for so many great memories.

God’s Own Drunk

Song by Jimmy Buffet

Well, like to explain to you all before,
I ain’t no drinkin’ man
I tried it once and it got me highly irregular
And I swore I’d never do it again
I promised my brother in-law that I’d go up watch his still

While he went in to town to vote
It was right up on the mountain
Where the map said it would be
Friends let me tell you one thing,
Tho it wasn’t no ordinary still
It stood up on that mountainside
Like a hugh golden opal

God’s yeller moon shinin’ on the cool clear evenin’
God’s little lanterns twinklin’ on and off in the heavens
Like I explain’d to you once before I ain’t no drinkin’ man
But temptation got the best of me
And I took a slash
That yella whiskey runnin’ down my throat
Like honey dew vine water
And I took another slash,
Took another’n an another’n an another’n
For you knew I’d downed one whole jug of that shit
And commenced to gettin’ hot flashes

Goose pimples was runnin’ up and down my body
And a feelin’ came over me
Like somethin’ I’d never experienced before
It was like, like I was in love

In love for the first time, with anything that moved
Animate, inanimate it didn’t matter
It’s like there’s a great neon sign flashin’ on an’ off
In my brain sayin’ “Jimmy Buffett there’s a great day a comin’”
‘Cause I was drunk
I wasn’t knee crawlin’, slip slidin’, Reggie Youngin’
Commode huggin’ drunk
I was God’s own drunk and a fearless man

And that’s when I first saw the bear
He was a Kodiak lookin’ fella ’bout nineteen feet tall
He rambled up over the hill
Expectin’ me to do one of two things,
Flip or fly, I didn’t do either one
It hung him up

He started sniffin’ around my body tryin’ to smell fear
But he ain’t gonna smell no fear ’cause
I’m God’s own drunk and a fearless man
It hung him up

He looked right in my eyes, and my eyes
Was a lot redder than his was
It hung him up

So I approached him, I said “Mr. Bear, I love
Every hair on your twenty-seven acre body
I know you got a lot of friends over there
On the other side of the hill

There’s ole’ rare bear, tall bear, Freddy bear, Kelly bear
Really bear, smelly the bear, smokey the bear,
Pokey the bear

I want you to go back over there tonight
And tell them I’m feelin’ right
You tell them I love each and everyone of them
Like a brother and a sister

But if they give me any trouble tonight
I’m gonna run every God damn one of them off the hill”
He took two steps backwards and didn’t know what to think
Neither did I but bein’ charitable and cautious
Well hell I approached him again

I said “Mr. Bear, You know in the eyes of the Lord
We’re both beasts when it comes right down to it
So I want you to be my buddy, Buddy bear”
So I took ole’ buddy bear by his island size paw
And I led him over to the still
He’s a sniffin’ around that thing cause
He’s smellin’ somethin’ good
I gave him one of them jugs of honey dew vine water
He downed it up right

Looked like one of them damn bears in the circus
Sippin’ sasparilly in the moonlight
I gave him another’n an another’n an another’n
For I knew it he downed eight of them
And commenced to doin’ the bear dance
Two snips, a snort, a fly turn, and a grunt
It was so simple like the jitter bug
It plum evaded me

We worked ourselves into a tumultuous uproar
And I was awful tired and went over to the hillside
And I laid down and went to sleep
Slept for four hours and dreampt me some tremulous dreams
When I woke up, there was God’s yeller moon
Shinin’ on the clear cool evenin’
God’s little lanterns twinklin’ on and off
In the heavens

My buddy the bear was a missin’
Want to know something else friends and neighbors
So was that still