Full of the goodness and peace of the family home, written in a beautiful, simple language, and wonderfully illustrated. That’s how I would describe the stories of the Little Bear’s life by Else Holmelund Minarik with pictures by Maurice Sendak. Else Holmelund Minarik (1920 – 2012) spent her long life in the United States, where she emigrated with parents from Denmark at the age of 4. Her most famous books are those about Little Bear, written in the 1950s and 1960s when she worked as a first grade teacher in Long Island, New York. The idea to write the first book came to her because she wanted to give students a story full of warmth and kindness for the holidays. She perceived that this was something they needed and it was impossible to find in the literature that she had to offer to them as a teacher. She distributed self-made copies of the first book about Little Bear among her students with her own illustrations. And later, the Bear, although so Little, somehow found his way to the wide world. The author once said: Little Bear is me in Denmark, where I was cuddled and loved.
