Folk Tale: Callie Ann and Mistah Bear by Robert D. San Souci

The Folk Tale, Callie Ann and Mistah Bear is a story about a young girl and her mother who wants to marry a quality gentleman. Her widowed mother begins looking for her new beau that’s different from her neighbor, Mose who Callie feels would be a great step father. Mistah Bear hears of Callie’s mom in search of a nice man, so he decides to disguise himself by dressing up in fine clothes so she could feed him all of her sweets. Being that Callie Ann is a very smart girl, she can tell just by the way Mistah Bear mannerisms that something isn’t right. So she decided to follow him to the woods on his way home and when he rips off his clothes she witnesses a big, black bear. When Callie returns home to tell her mom what she observed, he develops a grudge against Callie Ann and will do anything to get revenge. As I said before, Callie is a very smart girl and out wits the bear in every plan to attack her. Since this book has taken place in the old times this would be great way to show students how people from this time talked and dressed. The pictures in the book are outstanding. They have so much detail that would make the reader believe that they were actually in the book. I would really like to do this during Black History Month to show the students how times has changed.