Pocket Bear
by Katherine Applegate; illus. by Charles Santoso
Intermediate    Feiwel    272 pp.
9/25    9781250904362    $17.99

Narrator Zephyrina, a crafty cat (she prefers “tiger trapped in a kitty costume”), goes out at night looking for abandoned toys to deliver to the Second Chances Home for the Tossed and Treasured, operated by a girl named Dasha. Zephyrina sees herself as the “Robin Hood of felines” and brings her findings to her best friend, Pocket Bear, who provides order and emotional support to the newly rescued toys, which come to life at midnight. One evening Zephyrina finds a bear in a trash can, but Berwon is no ordinary toy. His background makes him a target of an unscrupulous toy dealer, and it takes every ounce of Zephyrina’s cunning to keep him safe. Although the story’s setting is contemporary, the characters’ manner of speaking and the featured toys’ connections to the past also give this novel a historical feel. Middle-grade veteran Applegate (most recently The One and Only Family, rev. 7/24) effortlessly weaves a believable animal fantasy while providing a fair amount of information about war: Pocket Bear was created to comfort an American soldier on the battlefield in WWI, while Berwon belonged to a soldier from Germany; Dasha’s dad died in the war in Ukraine, and her leg “was badly injured when a bomb hit her house.” An author’s note explains the novel’s origins and more about the toys that inspired Pocket Bear and Berwon.

From the November/December 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.