The Berenstain Bears Give Thanks Book

Review originally published on my blog, Nine Pages .

This was a long story time book, but one of my regulars showed up early, and I promised to read one book'whatever book she picked out. The prose in this book is prettier, more descriptive, the story more fleshed out with detail than what I usually read for story time, which was a nice change.

But this is a problematic book, relying too heavily on whitewashed history and doing little if anything to correct or clarify the narrative. Papa trades some furniture for a turkey from Farmer Ben'a living turkey. Ben's named the turkey Squanto after "a Native Bear who helped the Pilgrims plant their corn when they settled in their new home." I mean, I guess, Ben. Sister Bear doesn't like the idea of meeting her Thanksgiving dinner while he's alive. She wants to keep Squanto as a pet. She visits him at the farm as the weather grows colder. To distract Sister from the idea of eating Squanto, Mama Bear proposes a costumed show of the legend of Thanksgiving. "We'll need feathers for the Native Bears' headdresses." No you won't, Mama Bear. Honey Bear represents Squanto the Native Bear with a full headdress of turkey feathers and speaking broken English: "Me, Squanto!" her only line. Admittedly, Honey Bear is not portrayed as speaking good English, and I suppose the cast is limited to the preexisting characters, but…. "He speaks English! What a miracle!" Miracle it is not, Cousin Fred, though maybe there is some miracle in Squanto finding his way back to his own land if not his own village after all his trials. The whole legend of Thanksgiving as told in this story is the whitewashed imagining that we hear "in school over and over again every November" (or we did when I was in public school; I hope today's tellings are a little more nuanced, a little more accurate) with no discussion of the horrors visited on Native Americans by the European invaders.

That doesn't even begin in on the problems of reminding children that our Thanksgiving feast features a once-living bird, and that it might be possible to persuade their parents to skip the bird and to keep the bird as a pet instead because Squanto the Turkey survives, is given a new pen in the Bears' backyard. Parents should be prepared to answer questions that Sister Bear's feeling for Squanto might stir.

It's difficult to avoid religion when discussing the First Thanksgiving, and this book does not, the Bears' prayer even included in the text.