The oddly-titled children's book originally came out in 1950. The comics writer Gary Larson found the book when he was three, and made his mother read it to him over and over again, many times. Thus the book and its quirky humor were in some sense a kind of spark which inspired
The Far Side. Larson said in 1986: "There was something so mesmerizing about the image of this big bear going through the forest and squashing the homes of these little animals. I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world." And it might just be one of the coolest things in the world. The story is amusing and clever, and the illustrations (particularly of the "very stupid" and at times surly bear) are complementary--they are signed only as by "Angela." The book was reprinted in 2000 with a short Foreword by Gary Larson. And it came out again in 2014, credited as the 65th anniversary edition, with Larson's piece moved to the end of the book. Fun.
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