The Clearing - Hardcover

Arkin, Alan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062500325 ISBN 13: 9780062500328

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1986

Synopsis

Bubber the Lemming joins a group of forest animals in their quest for spiritual understanding and self-knowledge

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 8 Up Bubber, the young lemming hero of Arkin's The Lemming Condition (Harper, 1976) wakes from unconsciousness to find himself being carried into a forest clearing. Here live a snake, a duck, a possum and a deer under the benevolent eye of the Bear, a mysterious figure dwelling in a nearby cave. Nursed back to health, Bubber becomes aware that through their relationships with the bear, all of the animals are trying to reach the essence of their being, a transcendent self which the Bear describes as a "lion." And so Bubber joins the search. " 'The lion is a reality and when you find him you find yourself.' " Much longer and more abstract than The Lemming Condition , this book is aimed at older readers. As it concerns a spiritual odyssey, most of the action takes place in the characters' thoughts or in philosophical conversations. Only toward the end does much action occur, and that seems even more violent by contrast. (Bubber nearly dies rescuing the deer from wild dogs.) Character is adequately drawn, but the lack of physical description is disorienting. Arkin's earlier book contrasted the lemmings' blind rush to the sea with Bubber's search for understanding. Here there is no physical movement to parallel the spiritual one, to anchor the ideas behind the story in a coherent reality. Ruth S. Vose, San Francisco Public Library
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0062500325
• ISBN 13: 9780062500328
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1