Music Book Review: We’re Going On A Bear Hunt

Ostensibly the book We’re Going On A Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury would not appear to be a book that should be included in a series of reviews of books about music. However, the language in the book, the words used and the poetry of it is musical in itself.

Poetry and music are linked. The most obvious link between poetry and music is in song. Lyrics to songs are poems in their own right. Many composers set poets’ works to music, matching the rhythms of the music to the rhythm of the poem.

Poetry without music has rhythm, it has its own beat and when reading poetry you can feel the beat or pulse of the poem, just as you can with a piece of music. Poetry plays with words and the sounds they make, as music plays with sounds.

We’re Going On A Bear Hunt tells the story of a family who, one day decide to go out for a walk and on that walk they hunt for bears. As they roam, they encounter obstacles such as long grass, or a river or a snowstorm that they have to navigate. As they walk through the long grass it swishes and swashes; they splash and splosh through the river; they squelch and squerch through mud. They explore different natural materials that they have to pass through to go on their bear hunt, and while we know that the family would have experienced the look of the grass, the feel of it, the smell of it, this is evoked for the reader using sound.

Reading this book with my children, we often act it out – we go on a march through the house or in the garden and take plenty of time making and recreating the sounds in the book: swishing and swashing, or squelching and squerching (my children’s favourites!) We think about the sound of the word itself, the rhythm they make. It prompts me to ask the children to listen to the sounds around them: wind in the trees, the sounds of other children in the neighbourhood playing in their gardens, the sound of emergency vehicles at the top of the road (we live very close to a city centre so there are regularly emergency vehicles going past the top of our road).

This is not a book that has music as its subject matter, but it is a very musical book. It is also a fun book, and one we love reading.