Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen

“Whatever you do to animals, you do to yourself” I just finished reading Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen, and it took me on an emotional toll which is hard to do. The book is about 15 year old Cole Matthews who smashed Peter Driscal’s skull into the sidewalk. Now Cole has to choose between prison and Native American Circle Justice where he lives in isolation for one year. He chooses Circle Justice. When he is mauled by a mysterious white bear and almost dies, his soul is saved. It sounds like a cliché but it’s true. The theme of the book is change. That people can change for the better. A very positive them for such a dark book.

A part of the book that shows the theme change, is on page 203 where you can see Cole has changed. In the book Cole thinks, “Cole crawled into bed but tossed fitfully. He remembered his own close brush with death and how terrified he’d been. It haunted him to think that Peter had tried to end his life on purpose. How scared must he be to actually go searching for death?” In this part of the book Cole finds out that Peter, who Cole smashed his head brutally into the sidewalk had tried to commit suicide but failed. This part shows change because Cole shows feelings such as regret, sorry, and pitiful instead of the “old” Cole who was cold-blooded teen who was numb to any feels besides anger and revenge. Sounds like a sad and terrible life to me. This part of the book also shows change because he realizes what he has caused with violence and it haunts him to see that he is the real reason why Peter wants to commit suicide. Deep stuff huh?

Another part of the book that shows change is on page 239 when Cole tells Peter, “This morning we forgave each other, we also forgave ourselves… we allowed ourselves to become a part of the big circle. That’s why we saw the Spirit Bear”.  That’s sounds inspirational doesn't it? Makes you want to get up and smell the roses, but anyways back to the change in this part of the book. In the beginning of the book Cole had only picked the Circle Justice to avoid jail. It meant nothing more to him. He would be the one who would lie in the healing circles about how he was improving as a person. Now the Circle Justice was a way of life. The thing that gave him a new life and soul. He understood that the Circle Justice had healed him and Peter and really had changed and improved. This text also shows the theme change because he was also trying to show and explain to Peter that the Circle Justice had done well for Peter too.

I really enjoyed this book. In the beginning it had seemed a bit boring but when Cole has the encounter with the Spirit Bear the book got really interesting and I didn't want to close the book. The theme change really stood out. Usually it’s the characters or the problem that you first see but in this book I knew what the theme was right off the back which is a good thing.