The Bear by Claire Cameron

Cameron's book about two young children, five-year-old Anna and three-year-old Stick, orphaned by a bear attack while canoe camping on an island in Algonquin Park, Ontario, is absolutely impossible to put down. The story is based on an actual event--the death of two people in 1991 in the park, and the fictionalized version builds on what was known about the attack and on details of the wilderness environment provided by the author who was once a ranger in the same park.  In this account, Anna is awake in the family's tent, listening to her parents quiet talk by the campfire when her mother starts to shout.  Soon thereafter, her father reaches into the tent, grabs Anna and her brother and throws them into a large cooler that the family carries with them to store food.  Cameron describes the attack and its aftermath through the eyes of the five-year old, who can't figure out why the bear (or large black dog, as she first thinks), is trying to get into the cooler and why her parents don't answer her calls for help.

Eventually the bear leaves and the children manage to get the lid open and crawl out.  Anna's and Stick's dad is not there and the camp is a mess.  Anna doesn't see her father, but she does spot his shoe stuck on a piece of meat like the leg of lamb she once saw in the refrigerator at home.  Why, she asks herself, would Daddy put his shoe on a leg of lamb?  The children's mother is still alive, although motionless.  She whispers to her daughter to "be brave" and to put her brother in the canoe and leave the island, because it's not safe.  The rest of the novel details this bewildered child's efforts to do what her Momma wants--to paddle away and then wait for her parents to come get them.  Anna has to draw on every ounce of will and devotion to her parents and baby brother to combat hunger, thirst and fear of the black dog's return.   She is alternately hot, freezing, hungry, angry, scared and delirious.  I must confess to peeking at the later chapters so that I could keep reading about the children's suffering.  This is a great book, although not recommended for reading before or during Outdoor Ed!