Bad Bears in the Big City

We last encountered Irving and Muktuk, two larcenous polar bears, stealing blueberry muffins ("lots of muffins," Muktuk reminds us) from the frozen North town of Yellowtooth. The bearly concealing costumes did not fool Officer Bunny, and he deported them to the Bayonne, New Jersey zoo. This book opens with the bears on a Bayonne-bound plane, bearing a note from Officer Bunny warning the Zoo Director that they cannot be trusted! The two Pinkwaters depict the zoo as a kind of maximally minimum-security prison. As in a vintage prison film, the longtime resident, polar bear Roy, gives them a few pointers on zoo life. This includes showing the new "convicts" his stashes of muffins, fish cakes, his own private apartment with "a freezer, four air conditioners, and two electric fans,' and teaching them the easiest ways to perform their zoo duties--just swim around, and occasionally wave to people. The bears are babes in the city, not even realizing that bears can eat people until Roy warns them against it. "You can eat people?" "Don't even think about it," says Roy. Pinkwater's short sentences, while appropriate for his audience, have an additional function: They support his ironic, deadpan delivery of some truly bizarre, suspicious, and/or illegal bear behavior. However, Pinkwater also varies sentence and phrase length for comic effect. Irving and Muktuk spend the evening playing cards and making plans for breaking into the muffin factory. The next morning, the bears sneak out of the zoo (in the book's only confusing line, they escape by inserting playing cards into "a slot under the big clock") and--wearing makeshift disguises that would fool no one--they join a school group touring the muffin factory. Irving and Muktuk are beside themselves when they hear of the free samples, and they work themselves into feeding frenzy that leaves the two polar bears uncomfortably hot. In a deft plot turn, Pinkwater's bears decide to chill by laying on frozen pea bags at a local grocery store! Roy finds them and calls the zoo authorities. Now, Irving and Muktuk are afraid of retribution, a fate worse than their easy job at the zoo, and they beg Roy for help. In a move worthy of Perry Mason, Roy comes up with the "no people were eaten" defense, and the two errant bears are given a second chance, only if they promise to continue to not eat people (this one's easy for them), AND if they promise not to raid the muffin factory again (this one's almost impossible). The bears vaguely agree to the last requirement, but on the last page, Jill Pinkwater draws a wonderful picture of the bears looking slyly, conspiratorially at each other, as if they only they know that stolen muffins will be a big part of their future. "Bad Bears in the Big City" contains the magnificent dry wit associated with the Pinkwater's bear books, embedded within an incredible yarn that's played straight--as if Pinkwater is merely reporting the facts. Jill Pinkwater's very expressive ill