6 June 2025 POCKET BEAR by Katherine Applegate, Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends, September 2025, 272p., ISBN: 978-1-250-90436-2

“Of course, I have brilliant ears that would put a human to shame.

I can hear a flea fart from a mile away.”

– Zephyrina (the toy-stealing cat who narrates POCKET BEAR)

“He's five foot-two and he's six feet-four

He fights with missiles and with spears

He's all of 31 and he's only 17

Been a soldier for a thousand years

He'a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain

A Buddhist, and a Baptist, and a Jew

And he knows he shouldn't kill

And he knows he always will

Kill you for me, my friend, and me for you”

– Donovan “Universal Soldier” (1965)

POCKET BEAR is a fantastic fantastical story by Newbery Medalist K.A. Applegate. It features a pair of very old toy bears; a girl (Dasha) and her mom, who are war refugees and American immigrants; along with a diverse and colorful bunch of lost or abandoned stuffed critters. It is narrated by the klepto cat Zephyrina, who “collects” those toys from around the neighborhood, and masterfully weaves all of the tale’s pieces together for us. It is an elementary level read that relates to today’s immigrant- and war-related news and issues. It all revolves around Pocket Bear.

“When they’d first moved into their apartment, Dasha had found Pocket in the back of a kitchen cupboard next to a chipped teapot and a box of bent spoons.

He’d been left behind by the previous tenant, an old man whose great-grandfather had owned 

Pocket.

‘You mean your soldier?’ I’d asked him.

‘My soldier’s son,’ he said.

‘And then you got passed down through the generations?’

‘More or less.’ Pocket shrugged. ‘Spent a lot of time in cedar chests and crowded drawers. I was 

more memento than actual toy. In fairness, I’m not exactly cuddly.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘You’re more like a fuzzy rock.’

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Anytime.’

Fuzzy rock or not, Dasha was thrilled at her discovery.

She and her mother had arrived at the apartment with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a little trash bag filled with a few belongings.

They were refugees, Pocket said, from a wartorn place called Ukraine.

They’d seen many dark things there, he said.

They’d lost people they loved. Including Dasha’s father, who’d died in the fighting.

I asked how Pocket knew this.

‘I listen,” he said. He poked at my tail. ‘You should try it sometime.’

Pocket said that Dasha’s leg had been badly injured when a bomb hit her house.

‘Why was there a bomb?’ 

I’d asked.

‘War,’ Pocket finally answered.

‘Same as your war?’

‘No. A different war.”

Pocket, who is all of three inches “nose to toes,” was crafted a long time ago to be a mascot/good luck charm for a young soldier in the “War to End All Wars” (WWI). That particular young soldier was killed in action and Pocket had been passed down in the soldier’s family over the past one hundred plus years.

“There was something about him.

Something that commanded respect.

Which was weird.

Because we’re talking about a dude who was pretty much the size of a Big Mac.”

Dasha, the crutch-assisted, bomb victim, refugee child, works to clean up, create fictional identities, and find new homes (second chances) for the lost stuffies that Zephyrina drags home. Little does Dasha know that once she and her mother are asleep, Pocket Bear, who oversees the other toys, and who has been affectionately dubbed “Sarge” by the others, declares an “At Ease,” permitting the stuffed animals to all let loose and hang out, freed from their rigid, silent, daytime identities.

Into the scene arrives a smelly old stuffed bear that Zephyrina has picked out of a garbage bin and dragged home. It turns out that, like Pocket, the new bear is also something special.

Join them, and the rest of the cast in the dilapidated house (in a dilapidated neighborhood) that is known as “The Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured.” Fun, friendship scheming, mayhem, and a big, slobbering dog all await you there.

It could all be so glorious, if only humanity could put an end to the greed, the hatred, and the never-ending cycle of wars.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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