"That delightful
polar bear who is employed as a lifeguard at the Hotel Larry is back. His
matter-of-fact, sensible approach to life is evidenced in the explanations of
daily events that he offers the Frobishers, the hotel owners. Here, he
accompanies young Mildred to her dancing lesson and joins the class. He sees
nothing wrong with a polar bear dancing as, he explains, there was plenty of it
in his Arctic home. However, Madame Swoboda refuses to let him participate.
Mildred gives him ballet lessons at home, which he then shows the other polar
bears at the zoo where his brother works. The wacky story is clever, genial, and
full of the droll humor found in other books about Larry. Energetic pictures of
the active bears, done with simple lines, are particularly funny. This
imaginative, lovable polar bear will be welcomed back by young
readers."
"The
Pinkwater’s Larry is a polar bear of many parts. He plays the bongos, eats
blueberry muffins, serves as a hotel swimming pool lifeguard (in Bayonne, N.
J.)and he can cut a step or two. All polar bears can dance, Larry
informs his readers, but Madame Swoboda, who teaches a ballet class where Larry
has taken the hotel owner’s daughter, tells Larry that polar bears have no
place in ballet. Larry proves her wrong. Daniel Pinkwater’s language is a
thing of beauty; Larry’s elocution can unfurl like a banner in the breeze
("I have a great desire to tell a story and express feelings through
movement"). But it is the deadpan quality of the text that serves as tinder
igniting the drollery. The ridiculousness is broadened by Jill Pinkwater’s
pen-and-ink artwork: Larry was clearly born to legwarmers, and Madame Swoboda is
a smoky vision straight from Central Europe."
