""I thought it could be a bit like Carnival," says author Michael Rosen. "There could be all sorts of different characters giants and monsters and kings and queens and they'd all be walking after a guy in a bear suit." At the end, Rosen imagined, the guy in the bear suit would take off his bear head and all the other characters would say, "Oh, it's a guy in a bear suit," and then run away. "It wasn't a great idea, I confess," says Rosen."
""I did completely the opposite," Oxenbury says, "I just made it a family who went on a bear hunt." In the family there's an older brother, his four younger siblings and the family dog, who was based on Oxenbury's own dog at the time. "Everybody thinks that the older boy is the father," says Oxenbury, "but actually, I didn't want an adult in this adventure. I think children like the idea that they go on adventures without parents and adults.""
Michael Rosen originally imagined a carnival-like scenario with various characters—giants, monsters, kings and queens—chasing a man in a bear suit who would reveal himself and cause them to run away. Helen Oxenbury instead made the protagonists a family: an older brother, four younger siblings, and a dog based on her own. The family journeys through tall grass, a cold river, thick mud, a snowstorm, a dark forest and a gloomy cave where they encounter a bear. Oxenbury used watercolor to portray the English landscapes and rendered half the pictures in black and white to represent the waiting and thinking involved in overcoming obstacles.
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