FINISHED:

Hunter, Erin. (2008). Seekers: The quest begins. New York: Working Partners/HarperCollins.

[I gotta say, I really kinda liked this one. Indeed, I was compelled enough to keep reading and find out what happened to the 3 bears whose stories are told here. Actually, there are 3 stories told at the same time, with every 3rd chapter continuing the one bear's story. Kallik is a polar bear who, with her brother, is being led by their mother across the ice to land, as the warm months are approaching. Along the way, while swimming from ice sheet to ice sheet, Kallik's mother is attacked and murdered by killer whales, and Kallik is separated from her brother, thus leaving her to find her way to safety on her own. In the second story, Lusa is a black bear living in zoo who wonders what lies in the wilderness beyond the zoo fence. One day, a female grizzly is brought into the bear enclosure next to the one for the black bears, and she goes on about how she has lost her cubs and feels horribly about it. After attacking a zoo keeper, the female grizzly is taken away, and Lusa stops eating so that she'll be taken out of the bear enclosure and eventually finds her way out of the zoo. Lusa then skulks around the suburbs where she must forage in trash cans for food, beginning a journey to find the grizzly female's cub. Which, leads to the 3rd story: Toklo is a young grizzly bear tired of his brother being coddled by their mother. After the brother dies, Toklo's mother, so filled with grief, tells Toklo he must go off on his own and fend for himself. It is Toklo's mother who is then taken to the zoo, thus inspiring Lusa to break out in the hopes of finding Toklo so that she may tell him that his mother was sorry. It seems like all of the stories will converge in subsequent books (Lusa and Toklo do meet at the end of this one), and I will definitely keep reading to see what happens to these guys. My one major complaint - at least, it is the one thing that took me out of the story - is that there is a character whom Toklo meets who can change shape at will - from a human, to a bear, to a hawk, etc. There's a lot of "earth spirituality" in the book, which I'm fine with, but this character just took it too far...]

STARTED:
Augarde, Steve. (2006). Celandine. New York: David Fickling/Random House.

[Couldn't wait any longer to read this one. LOVED The Various and am really looking forward to finding out about Celandine in this prequel. Augarde has a way with words and his stories feel like classics of children's literature.]

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