Reviews for We're Going on a Bear Hunt: Anniversary Edition (Classic Board Books Series)

The average rating for We're Going on a Bear Hunt: Anniversary Edition (Classic Board Books Series) based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-04-22 00:00:00 Gary S Cooper A Scathing Review of We're Going on a Bear Hunt, aka "The Children's Guide to Passive Suicide" Before we go any further, a little context: There are plenty of children's books about self destructive impulses. In The Cat in the Hat, the children are seduced into destroying their entire house, which they know full well will result in mother's unbridled scorn. Franklin the Turtle is always doing stupid shit and then whining about it when he gets caught. I don't have a big problem with those books. They make sense to me because they follow three core principles: it's ok to depict kids doing dumb shit, because their mistakes are generally inadvertent. The mistakes characters make should teach children about human folly and the lessons we can glean from the err of our ways. Finally, rarely, if ever, are the parents depicted as condoning the child's self-destruction. Not so with this piece of shit. The parents lead their children gently by the hand right to the threshold of death's door. They take them to a bear's cave as he is, presumably, in the midst of hibernation, when bears are at their most pissed off and hungry. There are only two options that come to mind when I try to discern author intention here: this book is either a treatise for parents "tactfully" trying to get rid of their kids, or the first in a failed series of books, the overarching theme of which is "let's do stupid shit!" Yeah, they're going on a bear hunt, just like this zebra is going on a "lion hunt" Then there's the artwork. The artwork is impressionistic, evocative of my youth, particularly the memories I have of using the excrement in my diapers to paint on my bedroom walls. Much like the drawings in this book, I couldn't distinguish between the characters in my own imagery either. Only two things could be said of it with absolution. It stunk, and you can't bleach the images away once they've been burned into your memory. Aww. How cute. She's going on an alien hunt. What a beautiful day. Then of course there's the suspension of disbelief. Our characters traipse across the four seasons and every environmental variation at every altitude possible, meet a bear, and then react in the most inappropriate manner possible. They've come equipped with absolutely nothing but ignorance and stupidity. They cross rivers with potentially dangerous undercurrents. They walk through snow in summer clothes. This book is a treatise on everything you should not do while hiking. And for all the reasons mentioned above, by the time I got to the end of the book, I f*cking wanted the bear to eat the characters. Except the baby. That'd just be cruel.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-10 00:00:00 Michael Gonzalez "We're going on a bear hunt. We're going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day! We're not scared." Bear Hunt, beautifully illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, is the British children's book author Rosen's most popular book, this Vietnamese edition one of the (more than, now?) fifteen dual language ones. A family of five (with a dog) embarks on a bear hunt, (without weapons). At first you can see this is just a family outing, it's all in fun, it's about spending a day in nature pretending they are going on a bear hunt, and Dad is all smiles, but as we proceed from the sea though the meadow, across a river and into the dark woods, Dad is more serious, that's a kind of subtle key. And then there's a blinding snowstorm they just have to get through and it appears somewhat like an allegory of a life together, from joys through challenges, if not quite (yet) sorrows (See Michael Rosen's Sad Book for that), and then they actually proceed into a dark cave to find a sleeping bear?! What can they do? Obviously they must run home, back (to review together, children, what we have read) through every landscape we have been through to get there, and safe in bed--lock the door!--and commit to never doing anything so foolish again! But I would go with them, again and again! Lovely.