Touching Spirit Bear
by Ben Mikaelsen

HarperTrophy Books, 2001, 240 pp., US $5.99,
ISBN 0-380-80560-X

When I first heard my class was reading Touching Spirit Bear, I thought it was going to be stupid and really spiritual. But it turned out it wasn’t, and I ended up loving it! I would recommend Touching Spirit Bear to pre-teens. Or just anyone who is in for a great action, trust, betrayal, fear, redirection, and a loving kind of book. 

Cole Matthews is a juvenile delinquent, with what seems like no heart.  He has had previous charges for theft, beatings, and just plain bullying.  Cole’s most recent charge is for brutally attacking Peter Driscal, by smashing his head into the cement with no mercy.  Once Cole is charged with attempted manslaughter, there are two choices: jail or Native American Circle Justice. Circle Justice is a criminal justice system designed to help troubled teens by giving them a choice other than jail.

After choosing Circle Justice, Cole leaves all his family (which isn’t much, an abusive father and an ignoring mother) and belongings in his hometown Minneapolis, MN, and heads for an abandoned island in Alaska. On this island, he will be all alone for one year. He will have to provide and take care of himself.

The Spirit Bear is a huge white bear that is believed to help mend the spirit.  Cole sees the bear and decides he wants to kill the huge bear because it is not afraid of him. Well, as you can guess, the bear wins the fight, and Cole is forced to learn how valuable a life is.  He lies in the woods on the verge of death for longer than you could ever imagine. 

After his near-to-death experience, Cole decides that life is too short to make other people live in pain. Cole invites Peter, the boy he assaulted, to the island to experience the effect of the Spirit Bear. 

I think survival is key in this book. Survival is shown throughout the book by Cole and Peter, both surviving attacks. I thought the moral of the story was change because it shows that even a kid with a horrible life can change for the good. Also this story reminds you that you can change your mind even if you don’t want to, like Peter. He never expected to be Cole’s best friend after what happened.

I liked this book a lot because I felt like I could relate to Cole a lot, not by the violence, but by the complications of life and school.  This is why I think this book is for somebody who is a teenager or has been a teenager.  I think anyone in middle school or high school could relate because they’ve probably known or seen somebody get beat up. Also I think that this book is too mature for younger kids, because it talks about domestic assault and it is steered towards to older kids. 

I think that Ben Mikaelsen did a great job relating to his readers by giving Cole the attitude most kids would have if they were in his situation. His writing let me relate to the characters more because he used language that kids would understand today.

Touching Spirit Bear is written in the third person, which I usually don’t prefer, but it makes this book easier to understand. Using third person can put more details into the violent scenes and the more emotional scenes. I think that Ben Mikaelsen is an amazing writer because he recognizes that it will impact the reader’s mind more by putting it in the third person. 

Touching Spirit Bear is the first of two books; the second book, Ghost of Spirit Bear, is about how Cole and Peter struggle to survive the hardest thing of all… Life. I would recommend this book to you if you liked Touching Spirit Bear. 

~ reviewed by Lizzy