We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Helen Oxenbury and Michael Rosen
Full Transcript
Welcome to Still A Part of Us. This is Winter Redd and this is A Brief Note on Grief:
I’ve always been a language nerd and I’ve delighted in breaking down sentences and how they’re created. I even won my 5th grade Language Bee where I successfully named all the parts of a complex sentence: subject, verb, direct object, indirect object. One of my favorites of the English language are prepositions of place: in, around, past, on, for, under, along–you get the picture. It generally describes where a person or object is located.
You can imagine my delight when my husband introduced me to one of his favorite children’s books called “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” when our first daughter was born. It tells the story of a family of 5 who set off to catch a bear, a big one, of course, on a beautiful day. We know that they’re not scared–they tell us on each page.
As the journey progresses, you see them encounter some sort of physical barrier–tall grasses, a patch of mud, a whirling snowstorm–and they exclaim each time:
“Oh no!
We can’t go over it.
We can’t go under it.
We’ve got to go through it.”
And they go through each thing standing in their way (with fun sound effects). They trudge through the thick, oozy mud. They wade through the deep, cold river. They stumble through the big, dark forest.
And this is how it is with grief. The journey is messy. The journey is uncomfortable and even painful. And ultimately, you can’t go over it. You can’t go under it. You’ve got to go through it.
I hope this helps you today.
Please see the shownotes for a link to the picture book “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”.