The Friendship of Bears – Petr Horacek

April 25th 2022

Award-winning school picture book author and illustrator Petr Horacek grew up in Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic, on the outskirts of the capital city, Prague. He always liked the idea of being an illustrator, preferring to look at the pictures inside the books rather than to read them. He studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Prague where he painted and drew for six years, moving to England when he met his wife Claire. Petr started to work on children’s books when his first daughter was born. 

Petr explains the process of picture book writing and illustrating his newest book, A Best Friend for Bear.

My latest KS1 reading book A Best Friend for Bear is about a bear who is a bit lonely. He decides to look for a friend. On his journey he meets another bear, who happens to be lonely too. And what’s more, he is also looking for a friend. So, these two decide to look for a friend together.

Yes, the book is about two bears, but it’s also about friendship and about the fact that we often don’t see the things that are straight in front of us. To get an idea for a picture book may take a couple of minutes, but getting the text and the book right can take a very long time. Sometimes many months.

Once or twice in my career as a writer and illustrator I was lucky. Writing A Best Friend for Bear was one of these books that didn’t take long to write. In fact, writing the book was fun and easy. However, illustrating the book was a different story. I like drawing bears and I was convinced that doing the illustrations was going to be fun. But I struggled. I had already finished half of the pictures when I realised that I was not happy with what I had done so far. Being honest to yourself is hard. It is not easy to throw away work you spent months doing, but once you make that decision, things do get better. It wasn’t just the artwork that I wasn’t happy with. It was also the look of the main characters – the bears.

In the first illustrations the bears were a bit too realistic and too smooth; they were missing something. They were missing fun. I changed the materials I was using and instead of just watercolour and acrylic paint I started using oil pastels. That helped. I also made the bears’ legs shorter, gave them a heavier bottom and concentrated on the expression in their eyes. The result was that they looked more like toddlers. It made me understand these two fellows better. I started to smile more and more as I was drawing them.

I like the naivety of the bears, but most of all I like the playfulness and enthusiasm with which they are communicating with each other. I like the way how they agree with each other on everything. It’s something that children (and not just children) do when they meet for the first time. “Let’s play this.” “Let’s do that.”  "OK! Let’s do it!”

Disagreements and questioning things usually come later. At the beginning it’s just the enthusiasm and admiration for each other. It’s something that always makes me smile. These happy times.

I hope that children can recognise this from the book and that they can identify themselves in it. Finding a friend, building a strong friendship, learning to empathise and trying to understand each other is a huge part of growing up. In fact, it’s a huge part of our life, full stop.

A Best Friend For Bear by Petr Horacek is out now.

Download A Best Friend for Bear Teachers' Notes

Follow Petr on Twitter @PHoracek.