pFirst published in 1946, The Bear that Wasn't, written by the famed American animator, cartoonist, screenwriter, and film director Frank Tashlin, is a clever and entertaining children's tale of a bear and mistaken identity. Tashlin, born Francis Fredrick von Taschlein, in Weehawken, New Jersey in 1913, directed and supervised many Looney Tunes cartoons before he found fame as a motion picture director. The Bear that Wasn't was the first of his three children's books and is the humorous tale of a bear who has awakened from hibernating to find that the world around him has utterly transformed into an industrial city of the future. He is mistaken for a lazy worker and ordered to get back to his job in the factory. No matter how often he insists that he is indeed a bear, he is told by one boss after another that is only a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat. Bear knows who he really is though and, in the end, finds his way back to the life he was meant to live. This children'