In following the adventures of Chinook, the cinnamon bear and his sister Snookie (western prototypes of the jolly black bears of New England), and of the Ranger’s Boy, the child will learn of tree mice and burrow mice, and of the little mountain pack-rats who build tepees, of those giant mousers, the bobcat and the California mountain lion, to say nothing of the bat, pika, elk, and “snowshoe rabbit,” and the ever present Douglas squirrel.
He will wander through forests of spruce and fir to the snow-clad peaks, and back along cascading rivers, as the two cubs learn of the world in which they live.
The Literary Review of the New York Evening Post has said of a black bear book: “The little bear will delight all children just because he is a ball of mischief, sagacity, awkwardness—a real bear. Allen Chaffee’s books are unusual for vivacity, humor, and truth to the characters of the no longer dumb beasts.”
The Publishers.
CHINOOK THE CINNAMON CUB
CHAPTER I
A BOY AND A BEAR
The golden dawn of a June day in the Oregon woods streamed in slant bars between the tall trunks of the yellow pines, and into the rocky gulch where Mother Brown Bear had her den.
Dewdrops gleamed like diamonds on every flower and fern and spider web that bordered the cascading creek. Mrs. Tree Mouse peered with bright, beady eyes as a small, roguish face peeked from the cave mouth. Then out into the warming sunshine burst two of the most roly-poly little brown bears that she had ever seen. For a few minutes they wrestled like two boys, standing up on their short hind legs to pummel one another, or galloping about in a game of tag. Their small, flat feet made prints in the soft earth for all the world like the prints of a human child’s foot, and their black eyes twinkled with fun. It was Chinook and his sister Snookie, their soft fur gleaming cinnamon-brown in the sunshine.
Then the huge form of Mother Brown Bear came lumbering through the cave mouth, and with a soft rumble deep down in her chest she bade them follow her. She made her way lumberingly down over the crags and fallen logs to a stump where she might breakfast on a great cluster of yellow mushrooms. The cubs had had their milk in the cave, but they always wanted to sample everything their mother ate, and they went scrambling after her as fast as their short legs and fat sides would let them.