Begin (Growly, Book One)
A bear navigates a benevolent world.
Over the summer, Snarf reader Maria suggested I try the Growly series. We finally got around to the first book, and it’s fantastic.
I was going to hold off on writing a Growly review until I had read more of the series, but that could take a little while, and there’s plenty to talk about with just the first one. I acknowledge I’m being a little hasty here, but we can cover the rest later, and I’m feeling compelled to write this one now.
So, let’s…
The Book: Growly
The Authors: Philip & Erin Ulrich
The Illustrator: Annie Barnett
Length/Picture Density: ~250 pages, pictures every few pages
Begin, the first book in the Growly series, is one of the best books I’ve reviewed here. I’d compare it to The Wild Robot, both in how it presents an enchanting and benevolent natural world that welcomes a foreign creature, and how it’s a beautifully told story.
The story begins in a bear village. The bears live in houses, and have some effects of human life, like clothes, tools, backpacks, and hang gliders (yes, this story briefly features hang gliding bears), but this isn’t just a story about people with bears swapped in. These bears’ ancestors interacted with humans, who taught them to build these modern things.
The book takes its time with the setup, but it stays engaging as we establish the loving relationship Growly has with his parents, his best friend and burgeoning love interest Ember, and the jolly bear community he is part of. Backstory about the bear village gets layered in, as does the tale of a bear, a close friend of Growly’s parents, who many years ago glided out over a cliff to the lands below, and has been missing ever since.
The tension in the beginning steadily builds around Growly prepping to go on his Adventure — a bear rite of passage where he goes to live by himself in the woods for a few months. Everything up to that point is prologue. The story really begins when he goes off on his glider to begin the Adventure.
The work done in the opening pays dividends throughout the whole book. Growly has to make brave and dangerous choices right away, but ones that make sense, given everything we learn up to that point. He alternates between hope and despair in a way that feels earned and authentic. There is a weight to his choices because we have a feel for the emotional impact they’ll make on him and potentially those that know and love him.
Like The Wild Robot, Begin has tension that builds naturally without any bad guys. The book never feels like it’s stalling, but it manages to draw you along by putting a big event on the horizon, and then letting the tension around it percolate over the course of the preparations for it. The book manages to stay compelling without leaning too heavily into action, mystery, or heavy-handed plot devices.
The world of Growly is filled with kind, emotionally available creatures who are quick to hug and cry when the situation calls for it. There are no real personality conflicts, not the kind that drive a lot of dramas anyway, though there is ample opportunity for them, if the authors wanted to go that direction.
One theme I loved throughout the whole book was the warm treatment of outsiders, and the work different species do to make themselves understood to one another. Growly interacts with a bird and numerous monkeys, and they often have to make do with a limited amount of shared vocabulary, but it doesn’t eat into the level of interest and kindness they show each other.
It might all feel saccharine and unrealistic, but the characters never felt inauthentic to me, and by the time I might have gotten around to thinking along those lines, I was already pretty enchanted by the story.
All that said, I have to end this one with a warning: If you read one, be prepared to read three. I’ve avoided spoilers in this review, but I’ll say that the book ends with very little resolved. Now that I’m thinking back on it, I almost feel tricked by how compelling I found the story given how little Growly moves toward his ultimate goal by the end. The first three are intended as a trilogy, so if you want to feel like you’ve read the whole story, that’s what you’re in for. (And yes, I say this having only read the first one, but I’m pretty confident in this one.)