With primary school audiences, there are few crowd-pleasers as reliable as toilet humour. Whether it’s jokes about farts or superheroes in underpants, anything along this subversive line hits the mark. In Ruth Miller’s new book, a verse account of a rogue bear in a summer camp, this pleasure is deferred until the last page, where it is announced that the creature has pooped on a little girl’s bed. The rest of the narrative builds up to this final transgression, with the bear napping, dancing, and jumping on the bed he can’t resist.

Miller, the Toronto-based author of the picture books I Went to the Bay and I Went to the Farm, handles structure and repetition skillfully. In this book, the accounts of what the bear actually does alternate with scenarios of what the narrator suggests he could have done instead. The scenes are lively and imaginative, with an energy heightened by the dactylic rhythm of the verse, which makes the narrative galumph along in the manner of its ursine anti-hero.

Bill Slavin’s acrylic illustrations, with their vibrant humour and dramatic use of perspective, are in perfect synch with the text. His cartoon-like figures have highly expressive faces and gestures, and his rendering of the bear shows the jolly and obtuse character suggested by Miller’s quatrains. The choice of cover illustration – a scene in which the bear is dancing and playing the banjo on the bed – captures the spirit of the book nicely. Those who chafe under highly structured conditions, like school and summer camp, may find relief in this light-hearted celebration of disorder.