How Joe the Bear and Sam the Mouse Got Together

I was so excited to get to share one of my childhood books with my granddaughter. About how two people who like different things could still come together and become friends

I'll never forget climbing into my dad's lap back in the early 70's and learning how to read this book. I can still quote the story from memory. What a great lesson about how different people can find common interests! After looking for it on-line for many months, I recently broke down and paid $... for a copy I hope my young son will enjoy as much as I did when I was his age. We both love ice cream, like Joe and Sam, so some things will never change!

I loved this book as a child & have my tattered copy to share with my children. I was thrilled when my daughter brought home her 1st grade reading book & found she would be reading the story in school. The illustrations are different, but it's still the same charming story & it was fun to compare the two books. This book is a definite favorite in our home!

This is a book that my two daughters, children of the 60's, loved. It's also one that I enjoyed each time I read it to them. During most summers I teach English in China, and last summer, during our lesson on friendship, I decided to try to re-create as much of the story as possible and tell it to my students. My students, by the way, were all adults. They were entranced by the story, and now Joe and Sam have been to P.R. China. Big Bird has nothing on them!

A wonderful story of how friendships can form despite differences. One of my earliest memories is of the day I claimed to "read" and proudly recited this book back to my parents. In the 80's when I was in college, my mother traveled to what was the USSR and discovered that the two countries with the highest per capita consumption of ice cream were the U.S. and Russia. As love of ice cream is the common ground that Joe and Sam discover, she thought a dual translation of the book could serve as a wonderful point of connection to use for improving relations between the two countries. She tried to track down the book at that time. It was already out of print, but the project is still on my to do list. This is one of the few books from our childhood that my parents kept, despite the fact that it is in tatters. Its a keeper!

This book was first published in the mid-sixties when I was a child and (I believe) published by Parents Press. Joe the bear and Sam the mouse have very different likes. They both like to ride bike, but one likes to ride slow and the other likes to ride fast. They'd like to live together but one wants to live in a big house and one wants to live in a little house. Joe and Sam are sad that they cannot share these things. When they discover that they both like ice cream, they are very happy and agree that they will each do the other things they enjoy alone, but every day at 3:00 they will eat ice cream together. This is a wonderful story about accepting each other in spite of the differences and finding common ground. This was the first book I learned by heart and I loved to "read" it to anyone who would listen. Thirty-one years later, my sisters and I can still recite it word for word!