Children's ✦ Penny’s Take 🎧 Audiobook
A Little Brother to the Bear, and Other Animal Stories
William J. Long · 2006
🎙 Narrated by Ambiguous across editions: Bobbie Frohman narrates the commercial Alcazar AudioWorks audiobook (4 hr 19 min); a public-domain LibriVox recording is read by Maggie Travers. Could not confirm which recording corresponds to the specific 2006 print edition cited.
62/100
👎 Skip It
Long's nature writing is genuinely rich and closely observed, but this is the exact book that got Theodore Roosevelt publicly fuming about 'nature fakers' — some of the animal-intelligence claims (a woodcock splinting its own leg) are charming rather than credible. The prose is dense, century-old stuff that may test younger listeners' patience, and I couldn't confirm which of the two competing narrations you'd actually get.
✦ Penny’s Take — this is The Review Group’s own editorial assessment. Penny’s analytical review line researched this book from real sources and scored it across the lenses shown below. It’s an honest first-party read — not a page-by-page personal one. The gold ✓ Penny Tested mark is reserved for books Penny reads cover to cover herself.
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🎙 Narration: unknown Two different recordings exist (a commercial Alcazar edition and a public-domain LibriVox one) and it's unclear which matches this print edition — you may not know which narrator you're getting until you press play.
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Show the math
Verdict receipt0–100
Faith & family safety82
Substance / usefulness75
Craft & writing78
Originality78
Evidence & accuracy42
Hype vs delivers55
Age-fit55
Human-eye read45
Penny’s verdict62
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