Sal's Bear
Children’s Garden - Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Boothbay Harbor, Maine
Height 30" Bronze,
mounted on pine needles–surrounded by blueberry bushes. Dedicated on June 24, 2010

In 2008, Nancy Schön was commissioned by the Board of Directors of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens to make a sculpture of Little Bear from the drawings in the book "Blueberries for Sal" by the author Robert McCloskey.

Having read the book, it seemed to me that it is one of the most famous books about a child in Maine, about a major crop in Maine, and about a state that has one of the heaviest black bear concentrations per acre anywhere in North America. Hence, an interactive sculpture of a baby bear with a pail of blueberries seems a perfect choice for a sculpture in the Children's Garden.

The pail is nearby on it's side with blueberries spilling out of it. The pail would also offer a place for a child to sit, along with another child interacting with the bear. The Maine state bird, a Black Capped Chickadee is next to a spray of branches of pine cones, the Maine state flower. Little Bear, almost immediately, became known as "Sal"s Bear" and is decidedly thought of as a girl bear.