The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily

by Dino Buzzati

Book Overview

One terrible winter, King Leander leads his troop of bears down the mountains of Sicily in search of food. Along their treacherous and sometimes heartbreaking journey, the bears encounter an army of wild boars, a wily professor who may or may not be a magician, ghosts, snarling Marmoset the Cat, and, worst of all, treachery within their own ranks. If the bears' famous invasion of sicily sounds too distressing to read alone, that's because it is. Lemony...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060726083
• ISBN13: 9780060726089
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

A Tender, Somber Fable

Parent and grandparents who think children ought to be shielded from reading fiction about love, honor, war, sacrifice, timidity, valor, betrayal, selfishness, vanity, illness, death, renunciation and the importance of self-awareness should on no account give Dino Buzzati's The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily to their small relatives. In my view, the book allows children of the middle years and older to safely explore and discuss some of the big dark secrets of life, particularly adult life. With its unsentimentally stylish illustrations, intermittent, sometimes howlingly reached rhymes, but most of all its memorable characters, The Bears lives on in this hardcover version published by the New York Review Chidren's Collection. Smaller in format then the orange cloth-covered original, the new edition sacrifices some of the visual impact of the full-page color illustrations. The pages of the new slick hardcover, too, lack the heft and hand of the immediate post-World War II original with its almost fuzzy post-scarcity paper. Those differences, though, are more than offset by the pleasure of having the book widely available again. This is a big serious book about love, death, morality, human weakness, betrayal, talents hidden by misleading first impressions and the tendency to underestimate people who do not on first impression win favor in conventional eyes. The motive forces of love and tenderness, the importance and difficulty of discerning who is giving reliable advice, and who is not and why, the need for accuracy of information when making important decisions and of timing in determining whether action will be effective or not--like all good fables, the book teaches important, universal human lessons in readily accessible narrative form. That even wise and noble leaders may be mislead by plays upon their vanity-with disastrous consequence--is another lesson that never goes out of style. Like Maus, The Bears uses non-human characters to wonderful effect, lightening and diffusing otherwise didactic purposes and effects. Buzzati's command of narrative is skillful and elegantly understated. The arc of the story begins in the mountains with a Prince's departure and ends there with a King's return. The mood is sometimes frolicsome, more often somber, even elegiac. The writer's journalistic discipline provides every detail needed to support plot, story, characters. For a Hollywood ending, your young people are well directed to other books. To expose children--not very young ones, to be sure, perhaps starting around ten, depending on the child-- to appealing examples of empathy and the nuanced complexity of the human condition, not to mention the glory of word play and the pure, laugh-out-loud joy of silly rhymes, The Bears Famous Invasion still wins five stars in my house. May 18, 2008 The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily

The Bears' Invasion of Sicily

One terrible winter, King Leander leads his troop of bears down the mountains of Sicily in search of food. Along their jouney, the bears encounter an army of wild boars, a wily professor who may or may not be a magician, ghosts, snarling Marmoset the Cat, and, worst of all, treachery within their own ranks. Can King Leander and his troop of bears endure this treacherous adventure? It is for you to find out.

Political Fable and Children's Story

Dino Buzzati's THE BEARS' FAMOUS INVASION OF SICILY has the appearance of a children's book with a much more subversive political message at heart. The book starts with the author's charming illustrations and brief character descriptions- of the Bear Marzipan, the Bear Dandelion, the Bear Merlin, Marmoset the Cat and others. This introduction of the major players and their driving character traits has a theatrical almost overture-like effect of setting the stage for the action that follows. The plot reads as a magical-realist, forgotten history lesson of Sicily and the long wars and strife between bears and humans. The overriding themes of the book involve the corruption of humans and the real moral risk faced by the bears when they begin to adopt the airs and aspirations of their human counterparts. Few children's books deal with war or politics and none so inventively. It works beautifully for the child reader and adult reader alike. A mature young reader (for example a child who easily picked up on the allegory of the Narnia Chronicles) will discern much about human/bear nature and an adult with some exposure to history will read more into the sections on war and politics. In spite of basic premise (the ease with which power and decadence corrupt) it has a healthy dose of humor, magic and hope to balance the reality. The New York Review of Books deserves high praise for bringing back the neglected classics for the enjoyment of both children and adults.