Recommended Books
🌿 Introduction
At BearKind, we believe that knowledge creates understanding and compassion — and compassion creates the successful sharing of landscapes with these magnificent animals.
This set of hand-picked favourites invites readers of all ages to understand bears more deeply, appreciate the ecosystems they depend on, and learn how we can share our communities with wildlife safely and respectfully.
Whether you’re exploring bear behaviour, teaching children about nature, or simply looking to connect more closely with the wild world around us, these books offer insight, inspiration, and a path towards living with kindness — the heart of BearKind’s mission.
All of our hand-picked books are *** Highly Recommended *** !
🌟 Featured Book
Author: Trina Moyles
Title: Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival
What struck us most is how this book traces a quiet transformation: away from abstraction, fear-based thinking, and the logic of mutual avoidance, and toward attention, relationship, and responsibility. Bears slowly cease to be categories, numbers, or “problem bears” and begin to appear as individuals; sentient beings with memory, tolerance, and social lives shaped through repeated encounters. It is a book about coexistence beyond avoidance, and about what happens when attention reshapes ethics.
Why we love it: It encourages empathy, curiosity, and coexistence
Author: Charlie Russell
Author: Charlie Russell
Title: Grizzly Heart: Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears of Kamchatka
Charlie Russell’s Grizzly Heart story is a deeply personal account of what becomes possible when humans meet bears with respect instead of fear. Drawing on decades of experience, Russell chronicles five summers spent living among one of the densest brown bear populations on Earth.
Why we love it: Charlie’s story embodies the hear of our BearKind mission, replacing fear with understanding, and conflict with coexistence.
Link: Charlie Russell – A Lifetime of Studying Bears in the Wild
Author: Benjamin Killham
Author: Benjamin Kilham
Title: In the Company of Bears – What Black Bears Have Taught Me about Intelligence and Intuition
In Benjamin Kilham’s In the Company of Bears, he shares decades of hand-on experience rehabilitating orphaned black bear cubs and studying how they interact socially in the forests of New Hampshire. His work reveals a world far more complex, cooperative, and emotionally intelligent than most people imagine. Kilham uncovers how bears communicate, form relationships, problem solve, and navigate their landscapes, often in ways that are very similar to humans.
Why we love it: Ben Kilham’s work aligns beautifully with BearKind’s mission: to replace fear with understanding and to promote evidence based coexistence.
Title: Out on a Limb – What Black Bears Have Taught Me about Intelligence and Intuition
Benjamin Kilham’s Out on a Limb, is a revealing look into the emotional lives of black bears, showing their intelligence, social bonds, and intuitive problem solving through Kilham’s decades of hands on rehabilitation work and experience with black bears.
Why we love it: Ben Kilham shows bears as thinking, feeling individuals with rich social lives. His work helps people replace fear with understanding — this is the kind of shift that BearKind wants to promote to people everywhere.
Authors: Benjamin Kilham and Ed Gray
Title: Among the Bears
Benjamin Kilham and Ed Gray’s Among the Bears, is a vivid, firsthand account of raising and releasing orphaned black bears, revealing their intelligence, personalities, and social complexity – and showing how coexistence becomes possible when people can learn to really understand them.
Why we love it: This book is beautiful about capturing the heart and soul of black bears with warmth and respect, inspiring empathy and a deeper commitment to protecting them through compelling storytelling and intimate insights.
Link: Kilham Bear Center – Preserving the Black Bear Population
Author: Gay Bradshaw
Author: Gay Bradshaw
Title: Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russell
In Gay Bradshaw’s Talking with Bears Heart, she draws from over ten years of conversations between her and Charlie Russell that offer an in-depth look at his life, his worldview and groundbreaking approach to living respectfully alongside grizzlies for over seventy years.
Why we love it: Gay Bradshaw’s book demonstrates that when humans behave responsibly, respectfully, and without fear, bears respond in kind – and coexistence becomes not only possible, but natural.
Author: Steve Searles
Title: What the Bears Know – How I Found Truth and Magic in America’s Most Misunderstood Creatures
What the Bears Know is Steve Searles’ memoir of a lifetime spent working with black bears in Mammoth Lakes, California. He shares how he learned to understand bear behavior not through dominance or fear, but through patience, observation, and respect. His stories talk about the intelligence, individuality, and emotional depths of bears, exposing how human misunderstanding often creates the very conflicts that people are afraid of.
Why we love it: This book demonstrates how understanding bear behavior – rather than fearing it – creates safer, calmer interactions for both people and bears. BearKind promotes these kinds of stories that echo our core belief that coexistence is not only possible, but very rewarding as we learn to approach bears with respect and consistency.
Link: The Bear Whisperer
Author: McAllisters & Young
Authors: Ian McAllister & Karen McAllister with Cameron Young
Title: The Great Bear Rainforest
Ian McAllister’s Great Bear Rainforest is a stunning visual and narrative journey into one of the last intact temperate rainforests on Earth. Through powerful photography and on the ground storytelling, McAllister reveals the lives of coastal wolves, grizzlies, spirit bears, and the Indigenous communities who have protected this extraordinary ecosystem for millennia.
Why we love it: This book acknowledges exactly what BearKind is working to protect: the deep intelligence, beauty, and ecological importance of bears and the wild places that they live in and depend on.
🌿 Kids Books
Here are some books younger bear advocates will love!
Author: Ian McAllister
Title: Babies of the Great Bear Rainforest
Ian McAllister’s Babies of the Great Bear Rainforest is a vibrant, child-friendly look at the young animals who call the is coastal ecosystem home. Through stunning photography, kids are able to meet orca calves, wolf pups, seal babies and other spring babies in a gentle introduction to the wildlife of the great bear rainforest.
Why we love it: This book introduces young readers to the beauty and diversity of the Great Bear Rainforest through gentle, amazing images of the animals who live there. Empathy and curiosity are nurtured for children – helping them to see wildlife as important to understand and protect.
Authors: Ian McAllister & Nicholas Read
Title: A Bear’s Life
Ian McAllister and Nicholas Read’s A Bear’s Life’s Life is a beautiful photo-based book that follows real bears for a year in the Great Bear Rainforest. The bears are seen catching fish, eating berries, climbing trees and taking long naps. This non-fiction book is great for ages 5-8.
Why we love it: This book introduces young readers to see the real lives of bears in a way that builds empathy, curiosity and respect, right from the start. Children will learn to see bears as intelligent animals, not to fear, which aligns well with BearKind’s mission to foster understanding of bears in shared landscapes.