Knights (Little People Shape Books Series) Book

I want to preface this by saying I don't hate the Berenstain Bears.

Yes, it's true that the series has never quite outgrown its '60s corniness, along with some of the baggage that comes with it, like the lame/insulting "hardworking homemaker mom and lazy/good-for-nothing dad" stereotype. Some of the books are too long and the writing never approaches anything close to above-average. But still, the typical Berenstain Bears book is pretty bear-able (ugh) and will keep my son entertained through multiple readings.

Unfortunately, as far as quality goes, this book is far below typical. What we have here is a collection of six tales wrapped in a frame story, the latter of which concerns the Bear cubs' babysitter Mrs. Grizzle telling bedtime stories (question: has any woman in the Berenstain Bears series ever chosen to go by "Ms." instead of "Mrs."? I'm just asking, OK? Please don't read into this). The idea here is that the cubs really love Mrs. Grizzle's stories, to the point where they have to interrupt every few paragraphs, making comments, asking questions, or reciting well-known phrases.

This is where the book starts to go wrong, because it turns out having stories interrupted constantly in-text is just as annoying as when your kids do it in real life (OK, yes, it's cute and funny sometimes, but not after the 50th question when you're tired as hell and just want to pass out on the couch watching Amazing Race). Even Mrs. Grizzle often resorts to making passive-aggressive comments ("Shall I continue?", "Do you two want to hear this story or not?" etc.), which begs the question of why all this is necessary. I mean, if the kids, err, cubs were contributing something to the development of the plot, it might have been interesting, but trust me, you will lose absolutely nothing if you skip everything they say and just read all of Mrs. Grizzle's dialogue--I've done it plenty of times.

You'll even miss one particularly egregious line where Brother Bear asks why Goldilocks' middle-sized bowl of porridge is cooler than the small bowl, seemingly violating the principles of thermodynamics. Mrs. Grizzle responds with, and I quote:

"Now, Brother Bear," said Mrs. Grizzle, "don't go all nerdy on us."
"Me, nerdy?!" protested Brother, shocked.
"Never mind," said Mrs. Grizzle.

I mean, wow...have you ever heard of a children's book featuring an adult that belittles children and calls them hurtful names for the crime of asking a valid scientific question? Hey kids, by all means, bully your "nerdy" peers; the Berenstain Bears do it!

Which brings us to the biggest problem with this book: the stories themselves are poor imitations of the originals. Eagle-eyed readers might notice a message in smallish type on the cover: "Six Original Bedtime Stories." But what you actually get are either rote re-tellings or slight variations on the following well-known folk tales:

1. The Three Little Pigs
2. Goldilocks and the Three Bears
3. The Gingerbread Man
4. The Three Billy Goats Gruff
5. The Little Red Hen
6. Little Red Riding Hood

Now, I'm not going to beat up Harper endlessly about how ridiculous it is to put "Six Original Bedtime Stories" on the cover of a book like this, because the truth is, re-telling a classic story is absolutely fine, if it's done well. If you want a great example of this, check out The Three Ninja Pigs. If you want several very bad examples, look no further.

The problem with the Big Bedtime Book is the twists it puts on its stories are woefully terrible in a variety of inconsistent ways. Some, like "The Three Little Cubs and the Big Bad Pig," and "Goldibear and the Three People," simply swap out one set of characters for another (pig for wolf and bears for pigs, followed by switching the bear/human role in Goldilocks), then change the ending of the story to be a lame joke. Again--it's not the adding of a twist to a classic tale that's the problem, it's how lazy the execution is; there's no clever ideas involved here, no commentary on the original stories' themes, just a wacky brainstorm put into the title and then played for (un-received) laughs. The Goldibear story especially shows signs of lazy writing, naming the family of humans "Papa People," "Mama People," and "Baby People." Wouldn't "Papa Person" sound better and make more sense? Why the plural? The original characters aren't named "Papa Bears," etc. Would a line edit have been too much to ask for a 48 page children's book?

Other stories follow similar trajectories of awfulness. "The Three Billy Goats Gruff meet the Bogg Brothers" switches out a troll for three bigoted portrayals of "rednecks," who also happen to carry guns which they threaten to shoot the goats with. I mean, really? You had to change the story to put guns in it? What the hell? The best I can say for that one is that they leave the ending unchanged, though if you happen to read the cub/Grizzle dialogue, you get treated to a nice conversation where the cubs discuss how much they dislike eating vegetables, and speculate that goat does not taste good--because you know, why would you want to encourage kids to eat either of those things?

Still other stories like "The Gingerbread Bear" and "Little Red Grizzly Hood" stick completely to their classic counterparts, essentially changing nothing. One has to wonder what the goal was here; did the authors run out of asinine ways to modify these stories, or did they simply feel like altering four out of six was enough for one collection?

Either way, both of them are much more pleasant than "The Little Red Hen," which despite its unchanged title is now a horribly illogical and pointless tale (ending on yet another terrible joke about wheat allergies), to which even Brother Bear is prompted to respond, "That was the dumbest story I've ever heard." Yup. You said it, Brother Bear, you said it. Too bad no editor was around to listen.

But the worst part of all this is, despite the excessively standard artwork and middling writing quality, the classic stories told here are strong enough to actually make kids want to read this book again and again. That alone might merit a second star from me, if it weren't for the repeated suffering we parents must go through when publishers put out trash like this.

Please, people: The Berenstain Bears' Big Bedtime Book -- not even once.