When she was in Kindergarten, my daughter didn't like PE for one specific reason. Every time it was a PE day at school, she'd come home with a new horror story to tell of what antics a certain classmate was up to. Only going after her when they played tag, tattling on her to the teacher for cheating when she (according to her) wasn't cheating, and being too rough during games like dodgeball. I felt terrible for her each time and did my best to console her and try to offer solutions. I've found that dealing with my kids getting bullied has been one of the most difficult parts of parenting. You have a strong desire to intervene, but in many cases that won't help the situation at all and could potentially even make it worse. Other times like what was happening in PE, I don't have the same level of control because it's happening in a different environment away from me. The best I could do was just listen, try to offer solutions, and if it got worse enough try to get some assistance from others such as the PE Teacher in the class. Like we learned in The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Teasing, bullying is just part of life and as a parent the best I can do is just prepare them for it, come up with good solutions for it, and hopefully minimize it and its impact on them.
In "The Berenstain Bears and the Bully" we're given a pretty extreme example of some childhood bullying and a few different solutions to it. I'm going to warn you now though, this book was clearly written in a different time with some "solutions" that I consider outdated. I do not condone violence as a solution to bullying, although as I'll share later I don't think that is necessarily the point the book is trying to get across either.
The Opening Rhyme
Obviously no cub wants to get beaten up again, but I'm not sure if this really fits with the overall theme of the book. Bonus points for the he/she here though especially in '93.
The book opens with a beat up Sister walking up to Mama and Papa crying uncontrollably and unable to say what's wrong. After some prodding, they find out she was beat up by a Bully. Papa's initial reaction is to head down to the playground himself to confront the Bully, but Mama convinces him and Sister to try other solutions. Brother Bear sneaks out to deal with this bully personally and quickly finds out that it's a girl bear named "Tuffy" who's even smaller than Sister. Because of this fact he quickly abandons his plans to beat up the bully himself and instead makes a stop by the school to get some boxing equipment so that he could teach Sister the art of defense.
The Title Page
This is probably the 2nd best title page image in my humble opinion. Sister imagining herself in various tough ways, all heading in the direction back from where she is coming from. In reality though walking the opposite direction as that (away from something) with tears on her face.
While the family has officially decided that the best course of action is for Sister to just keep her distance from Tuffy, Sister is still clearly upset and wanting some revenge. Brother Bear then sneaks her down into the basement where she gets a "Rocky" style training montage in the art of defense. When Sister returns to school she goes with Plan A as long as she can, until she sees Tuffy hurting a baby bird and needs to step in. Tuffy redirects her attention to Sister and charges in to beat her up again, when Sister employs her newly gained self defense skills and punches Tuffy on the nose, knocking her to the ground. Both bears are sent to the principal's office where it's revealed Tuffy is mostly afraid of her parents finding out about this because she thinks she'll get hit by them for punishment. Tuffy's parents aren't called but she ends up going to the school therapist "for quite a while" while Sister is let off with a warning because she was just trying to protect the baby bird.
A realistic scenario, on the extreme end
We aren't given a complex plot to deal with here. But we are given a realistic scenario for bullying, although one on the more extreme end of the spectrum. Tuffy is a one dimensional character - just a kid who likes to beat other kids up for no reason - but SEL books are for children and we don't need some convoluted backstory rationalizing why some villain acts the way they do like it's some Marvel movie. We're given a few different ways to deal with bullying and can see how each one plays out. Generally speaking though I like how realistic this book is. Kids aren't expected to perfectly apply solutions they've learned to deal with their problems and Sister does some avoidance, but ultimately does end up in another fight with Tuffy. Sister probably needed a bit more of a punishment for punching Tuffy as opposed to being let off.
Either the biggest problem in the book, or the most cathartic moment. You decide.
We also get to see things through Brother's perspective. Wanting to confront the bully to resolve the issue, deciding he can't fight a girl and/or someone smaller than him, and then helping Sister with some, er, alternate solutions to handle Bullying outside the sanctioned solutions from Mama and Papa.
Not shying away from the emotional response to getting bullied
We're given a pretty straight forward moral to this one. Bullying is bad and this is what you can do about it. Unlike "Too Much Teasing" we are only shown Bullying from one direction - that of the victim of bullying - and it's a pretty straight forward plot from there. That's not to say this book is basic though, there is actually a lot that I'd like to unpack here not only because we are given a few solutions to bullying, but the fact that it is not shying away from the emotional response to getting bullied. Sister is clearly MAD and wants revenge on her bully. Brother hates seeing what happened to Sister and immediately plays the "big brother" role to help her with her problem. Even Papa Bear wants to immediately head down to the playground to confront the bully. Probably just to give them a talking to, although with Papa Bear you never know. I have been Papa Bear here a few times. The desire to protect your kids and step in for them is really strong. Mama steps in here though and is the voice of reason again and making sure cool heads prevail. I don't think there is any surefire one solution fits all to Bullying but I think the one that generally applies best is to just avoid. Remove yourself from the opportunities to get bullied, and then when in those situations don't engage. This isn't always possible, there are times such as in a class where you can't physically remove yourself or when the bullying becomes physical where you can't just ignore it, but I think it always makes sense as a Plan A. So from this perspective I agree with the approach the book takes to bullying at least on the surface.
About all that punching
It's time to talk about the elephant in the room - the violence in this book. Sister getting beat up so badly her clothes are torn to shreds, Brother and Sister beating the crap out of Mama's bag of beans to prepare for an inevitable fight with Tuffy (even under the pretenses of "self defense"), and then Sister clocking Tuffy right in the nose as Tuffy charges in. Then we get the troubling report that Tuffy is likely being beat by her parents. It's an unfortunate fact of life that some bullying is physical and the book isn't shying away from that in a way only an 80's book would. But this book was written in 1993. I also don't have any qualms with kids learning self defense techniques, but there is a level of aggression here that I think warrants an additional conversation with kids. Right before training Sister is laying out exactly what she'd like to do: "punch that Tuffy's nose right through her face, then kick her in the shin, then knock her down and --". We're given a half-hearted "this is Plan B" type of statement by both Brother and Sister, but we all know where this is headed. This then leads to what I think is the biggest missed opportunity in the book. When Sister sees Tuffy throwing rocks at the baby bird, a reasonable action would have been to go to the recess teachers and let them know, but instead we get a bit of vigilante type behavior from Sister leading to the fight. We then get a pretty casual bomb dropped on us that Tuffy is likely the victim of parental abuse which is used as potentially the reason why she's a bully at school. This opens up the door to a lot of conversations with the kids that you may not be ready to have depending on their age. I will generally try to gloss over this quickly for my younger son, but it has led to some good conversations with my daughter about these incredibly difficult situations. I don't take as much issue to Sister's lack of empathy to Tuffy's plight though, because she is 6 (ish - the bears' ages are a whole other can of worms I'll save for a future review) and any 6 year old is going to be way more concerned about their own problems than that of peers.
Sister, from disheveled to the calm confidence of a fighter
Sister is the main character of the plot for this one and the illustrations primarily focus on her, but Brother's support role is also done really well. Seeing Sister go from totally disheveled and beat up, to angry, to surprised and motivated when Brother teaches her boxing, to the calm confidence of a fighter when Tuffy approaches, some apathy when Tuffy explains her story, to some relief when getting let off with a warning.
Brother's sad it's not somebody that he can "clean up the playground with".
That bag of beans didn't really deserve to get beat to a pulp, but it's drawn in a way where I would like to test out at least one jab to it.
I really do want to punch that bag of beans. Maybe I'll try on this big bag of rice we have in the pantry.
Tuffy is drawn in a way where she just appears aggressive even if you can't hear her saying "wanna make somethin' out of it?".
Wanna make somethin' out of it?
Outside of a few of the rhyming Berenstain Bear Books (like Ghost of the Forest), I haven't spent much time talking about the actual writing of these books. Berenstain Bear books generally find themselves in that general "well written" category. Enjoyable to read out loud to the kids, no awkward or run on sentences that you trip over even after the 3rd read, but also not Shakespeare. That being said, one thing that I do greatly enjoy about the writing of these books is the quotability of some of the phrases. "And The Bully" is absolutely full of them and many have become household staples. Tuffy alone contributes some gem one liners such as "What did you expect me to be--an eggplant?" which is now used whenever somebody in the house expresses some confusion over an answer. Or the antagonistic "Wanna make somethin' out of it?" that my daughter now uses when she is feeling particularly sassy and sarcastic. My personal favorite though is Brother Bear's realization that the bully "he was going to clean up the playground with" was a girl. It's so over the top, I can't help but let out a laugh and am then having to explain things to my kids I'd rather not have to.
I generally really like this Berenstain Bear book. It combines an interesting story with a useful moral for kids to apply to bullying. Given some of the problematic issues with violence though I will dock a star and just give it a 4/5 overall. None of it is bad enough to make the book not useful for its designed purposes though.
The Berenstain Bears and the Bully (Stan & Jan Berenstain, 1993) opens with Sister crying too hard to talk and ends with a Rocky-style basement training montage and a punch to Tuffy's nose. It's a picture book for ages 4 to 8, roughly 12 minutes aloud, plus however long the follow-up questions run. The solutions are dated, boxing lessons included, though the point isn't quite that violence works. 4/5, worth it for kids who've met their own Tuffy, as long as a conversation about the punching follows.
