Monday, June 29, 2009

Bear's New Friend by Karma Wilson and Jade Chapman (3/5 stars)

This is a story about Bear who hears a noise in the woods. Bear keeps running into his normal friends in the woods but none of them are the ones making the noise. In the end the animal making the noise was hiding because it was scared and is happy to be friends with Bear.

The pictures in this book are really cute. My two year old loved the repetitive phrase "And Bear says 'Who?'" He loved repeating the Who part. He also loved naming the animals and repeating the sounds they would make.

Unfortunately this book is pretty long and wordy for a board book and I have had a lot of trouble getting my son to sit down and read it. He loves to read books, normally he will tolerate a longer book, but he tells me this one is boring and always wants to put it away. The parts where Bear says "Who?" don't necessarily make any sense with the rest of the story and are kind of put in weird places. Also this book doesn't really teach anything about friendship; it says on the cover it is "A Book About Friendship". If anything it touches on issues of shyness but even that is only brief.

In summary the pictures are cute. The story length and content leave a lot to be desired (especially from my two year old son's point of view). This book will never be a favorite of his or mine. Also don't be misled, this isn't a story that teaches some sort of deep-seated lesson about friendship. It also isn't a story that is educational in any way. The only positive parts about this book were the repetitive "Who?" phrases that my son enjoyed and the fact that there are animals in the story. It's an okay book but will most likely be gotten rid of sooner than later.

No comments:

Post a Comment