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This story brought out all sorts of emotions in myself and with my students as we read it. It is easy to fall for the characters and the inner and outer struggles they are having. Trouble is a bear that doesn’t know that he is causing trouble. All he knows for sure is that he misses his mother and that he needs to eat, even with a broken jaw. Johnathan finds solace in the comfort of the animals at the zoo and grows to love trouble and care about his well being even after the hurt he has caused him. In this book you’re not quite sure what is to come next! In the end, I was happy to see that this book is based off a true story; its quite remarkable! ( )

Ten-year-old Jonathan practically lives at the Anchorage Zoo, where his father is a keeper. He loves animals, and even imagines himself inside their bodies, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel.Meanwhile, a young brown bear is wandering through the woods near Anchorage, alone and hungry. One night, while searching for food, the bear crosses paths with Jonathan, who eagerly follows him onto the zoo grounds.But when the bear accidentally kills Mama Goose, Jonathan's favorite zoo creature, the boy loses the empathy he had felt earlier. He wishes that the bear-now nicknamed Trouble-would meet the same fate as his beloved goose, and he impulsively takes steps to make sure that happens.Based on an actual incident, and told in alternating chapters from the bear's and Jonathan's points of view, this is both an involving animal story and a thought-provoking investigation into the consequences of one's actions.

I read this book aloud to my daughters.

Overall, we enjoyed the book. My girls love anything and everything to do with animals, so I knew they would.

There were some strange parts of the book where Jonathan and his sister play a game where they try to imagine themselves inside the animals becoming what they see and feel. The parts of the book written where he is "inside" the animals is just weird, though. I am all for creativity and imagination, and that is not what I have a problem with; it is just the way that Bauer wrote those passages that just seems "weird" to me.

We have read other Bauer books that we have enjoyed more. ( )

this book is about a bear who is a wild cub and is always getting in trouble by sneaking around at night and is getting in to trouble by go into the neighbors yard and is always making noise. ( )