Teddybear Blue

This is essentially a song of devotion and unconditional love to a beloved blue bear sung by a small girl narrator. One needs to be an accomplished reader aloud to get the best from Doyle’s rhyming text that works best as a kind of upbeat chant.

A playful exuberance springs from the scenes, which portray very much a child-centred view of things; and young children love helping to spot the elusive ted hiding in each double spread. Both Teddybear Blue and his child are enormously appealing; the former with his ‘fliffy-fluffy haircut’, bulbous tum and ‘funny little [trainer] shoes’ and the latter with her wayward blonde hair, chubby face and spindly legs. Immediately endearing too are her lumpy toys with their modelled, rather than drawn appearance; even the typeface has a child’s hand look about it.