The Bear and the Piano

What’s it about?

The story.

Deep in the woods, a bear stumbles upon a strange object with black and white keys. He teaches himself to play. The sounds he makes draw other animals, and eventually draw the attention of people from the world beyond the trees. The bear is taken to the city, where he plays in concert halls to standing ovations, and slowly realises that fame and the forest are not the same thing. David Litchfield's debut picture book works because it refuses to make the moral simple. The bear's ambition is legitimate, the city is genuinely exciting, and the pull of belonging is felt on both sides: in the forest he left and in the world he found. Litchfield's illustrations, warm, luminous, full of light, make every page feel like a still from an animated film that nobody has made yet. The emotional arc is one of the most sophisticated in contemporary picture books: a story about what it costs to find out what you can do, and whether it's worth it. Won the BookTrust Best Books Award and established Litchfield as one of the most distinctive voices in children's illustration.