Cute! Too cute! But not insipid at all! Can’t you tell by
the cover? Oh it’s so good!
“Four small chairs
just right for bears.
Where is the bear
for each small chair?”
just right for bears.
Where is the bear
for each small chair?”
Enter Calico Bear, Fuzzy Bear, Yellow Bear, and (my personal
favourite) Floppy Bear.
“Four happy bears
on four small chairs.
Not a bear
has to share.”
on four small chairs.
Not a bear
has to share.”
Opps! Here comes Big Brown Bear. How will the five bears
share the four chairs? It’s a dilemma that only some lateral thinking and an
attitude that ‘no bear should go without’ can solve. Together, they work it out
in a beautifully simplistic rhyme and adorable illustrations that make up just
want to cuddle with them all. Well, maybe I can only speak for myself there.
This book is just full of charm, partly because it doesn’t
go out of its way to ram a message of sharing down your throat (or that of the
child you’re sharing it with). It simply presents a situation where there are
not enough chairs to go around and the natural, un-authoritarian thing to do is
to work out a way that everyone can sit. It’s not initiated by any of them,
none of them do anything wrong. And then it ends with:
“Yes!
There’s room up there
for all five bears!
Now it’s fair!
The bears all share!”
There’s room up there
for all five bears!
Now it’s fair!
The bears all share!”
Everything is even…
...
...
...
Floppy Bear’s just the cutest.
Thanks for you comments on my Bears on Chairs! Floppy is my favorite bear, too. It's such fun to see enthusiasm for the book from around the world. In Japan, it will soon be listed as the 9th best picture book of 2011 (in a Japanese translation). And in Australia, the book will be read in an upcoming production of the children's TV program, Play School.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your wonderful review!
Shirley Parenteau