The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Teasing: The One Where the Bully Gets Crushed by a Pig-Wrestling New Kid

I am the parent to two wonderful kids. An intelligent, thoughtful and empathetic daughter who's 8 years old and an energetic, playful, and kind 4 year old son. Every day they will do something that makes my heart melt and makes me proud to be their parents. During these same days, they will do something to each other that is so mean and unnecessary it will make me wonder where I could have possibly gone so wrong.

It really makes me question the logic my wife and I used when considering a baby #2 where we'd say things like "they'll always have a play mate!" and "it'll be so sweet to see them looking after each other" with pictures in our heads of our daughter holding our son's hand while he's learning to walk, or pushing each other on the swing. We definitely do get those moments and they are so precious and I need to remember to take mental pictures of those more often. What we didn't plan for was all of the fighting and teasing though.

I don't even have to dig that deep for a story. Just this morning my son was doing a puzzle (he's obsessed with them) and my daughter decided that she wanted to "help" him by taking all of the pieces and flipping them upside down. Almost immediately our son sounded the alarm that his sister was totally ruining everything and when questioned all she had to say for herself was "I thought he'd like me making it a bit harder". Well let's call it what it is, that was some button pushing. I'm sure it was in subtle retaliation for our son going into his sister's room the previous night, sneaking into her gem collection box, and taking what he knows are her favorite stones and bringing them into his room. The worst (or funniest?) part of it all was that once he had them in his room, he calls his sister in to look! Argh, I'm frustrated all over again just writing this down. Why are they so insistent on pushing each other's buttons? I should read more parenting books and I'd probably understand better or have a more rational response to them.

Anyways, let's talk about the actual subject of today's book review: "The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Teasing". If you've been following my Berenstain Bears project, I'm sure you've realized that lately this book has been getting pulled out a lot. To me one of the most interesting Berenstain Bears books in our collection.

The Opening Rhyme

Decent rhyme with slightly awkward wording. Again a bit misleading as Sister being pleased that Brother is getting teased isn't really the focal point of the book, but does foreshadow what will happen with Brother.

The book opens discussing a few ways where Brother and Sister Bear are both alike and unlike each other in relatively mundane ways and then eventually finishing by saying that Brother enjoys teasing while Sister does not. I mean given that Brother is doing the teasing and Sister is the one being teased these positions make a lot of sense.

The Title Page

Brother ruthlessly teasing Sister with so many "Nyah" "Nyah" which is like the most basic forms of teasing there is, but probably the one I see my kids use the most often. Would Sister just take it though? In some books she's a bit feistier than this.

Immediately we get a plot twist and when Brother gets chosen to be a "special messenger" for the Principal he becomes the target of teasing by notorious bully Too-Tall Grizzly and his gang. Obviously Brother does not appreciate the teasing and Sister Bear watches smugly from a distance as Brother gets his comeuppins. We get yet another plot twist when Brother, who was dreading the day ahead anticipating more teasing, sees that a new cub has arrived at the school named Milton Chubb who has the look of a cub who is going to get teased. At first Brother Bear enjoys not being the target of teasing anymore, but quickly sympathizes with Milton and stands up for him against Too-Tall Grizzly and his gang. After befriending and learning more about Milton, Brother hatches a plan to get back at Too-Tall and his gang. He convinces the PE teacher to start a wrestling team where Milton then proceeds to use his pig "rasslin'" skills to crush Too-Tall and his gang. The book closes by saying that Brother and Sister actually agree on one more thing now, that teasing isn't a very good idea.

The lesson, from about four different angles

Alright there is a lot to unpack here. I'm going to give a fair warning that this will probably be a really long book review because there is so much I want to talk about. Let's start with the moral of the story. Teasing is bad. Everybody knows this and there are a million SEL books out there that will give you a straight forward plot on this. Berenstain Bears takes on this topic with some of the traditional "it's bad and people who do it are mean" approach while also adding in a few additional pieces to it that make it both more realistic and in my opinion more useful for learning a lesson. For instance the way Mama approached it was to tell Brother that it "wasn't such a good idea" the phrasing of which I think is really interesting as opposed to saying it's just outright "bad". She also talks to Sister about "not being too sensitive" which is an entirely different angle than you'd generally see in your typical anti-bullying book. Papa goes as so far to say that "teasing is just part of life" and that too much fuss was being made of it (typical Papa Bear response).

Ok so we've already been given a lot of different ways to handle teasing, is there too much going on here for a child to process? In my opinion no. We're being given a few lessons at once, but all of them are useful for applying to life. Teasing is a bad idea and not something you should do sure, but also everybody knows nothing enhances teasing more than responding to it and that ignoring or being apathetic to it is the most effective response. This is really all we get from Mama and Papa all book long, after this point the cubs will have to just let things play out. Brother of course then gets to be on the other side of teasing and doesn't like it one bit and I'm just wondering why Too-Tall and his gang didn't have anything better. I guess that's bullies for you.

A detour into the teases themselves

Alright this is where I need to take a bit of a detour and talk about the actual "teases" in the book. Disses such as "Brother, Brother, is so good! He does everything he should!" and "He says his name is Milton Chubb! But we call him flub-a-dub". I find them both extremely lame and perfectly fitting for a cub as dull as Too-Tall Grizzly to come up with them, but also somehow weirdly catchy.

Easily one of my favorite things to read in any of our children's books. Does this make me a natural teaser?

Every time I read it I put on my "meany bully" Too-Tall Grizzly voice along with the mocking cadence of a jingle like that. My kids blow up with laughter each time, and I wonder if all of a sudden this book is teaching my kids that teasing is funny.

Also, the teasing for Milton seems to be at an entirely different level than Brother and I'm left wondering if maybe Stan and Jan were wanting Milton to get teased this bad. I mean they decided to make this "oversized" cub's last name "Chubb" for instance. If I'm honest, I'm not entirely sure how to feel about all of this other than to say it definitely makes the book more entertaining and interesting to read.

Honestly these are just outright mean. That is what teasing usually is, but it's hard not to like legitimately feel a bit uncomfortable for how Milton is written in this book at times.

The revenge plot nobody needed (and everybody enjoyed)

So Brother gets gifted an opportunity to escape his teasing when Milton shows up, but of course now he's learned his lesson that teasing isn't really a good idea. Again this is modeling some behavior for kids to look at. It's not just enough to not do teasing, but to stop teasing when you see it. He befriends Milton and we get this nice little side story where we learn that Milton's parents are "hired bears" for Farmer Ben and they are neighbors and that Milton can catch pigs by putting them into headlocks (I'm not kidding, we get a great image of this).

Is this a banned book for PETA?

Apparently this is enough for Brother to come up with an elaborate scheme to get back at Too-Tall on Milton's behalf (who never really seemed that bothered by the teasing by the way). The end of Milton smashing Too-Tall and his gang into submission is definitely cathartic. Anytime Too-Tall gets what's coming it's good, but I think it's also a bit unnecessary here. You don't need to "get back" at a bully for teasing. Oh I know you certainly want to, but they could have ended the book after Brother steps in on the teasing and befriends Milton and then just decides teasing isn't a good idea. It's decisions like this though that put this book over the top for me. We are just given some extra parts that even when unnecessary are just fun to read. My kids love seeing Too-Tall get squished.

Honestly one of the most lasting parts of this book for me are the names of the movies that Brother and Sister want to see. Sister wanted to see "L'il Lambie-Pie" and Brother wanted to see "The Spookiest Spook". I find every opportunity to use these names in my normal life and now anytime there is something scary I will also refer to it as "The Spookiest Spook" and anything that is extremely tame, or cute, will be called "L'il Lambie-Pie".

Absolutely blockbusters both of them. If somebody ever makes these movies for real, you can count that I'd watch them.

So where does this one rank? I believe this is one of the best Berenstain Bears books out there and a clear 5/5. We're covering an important topic that all kids will encounter and it'll show up in many different forms. Being the teaser, being the victim of teasing, witnessing teasing, teasing between siblings, teasing between classmates, etc. We get it all and the kids are given ways to understand it and ways in which they could act. Alongside this it's just a really interesting story with new characters introduced, plot twists, and plenty of lasting tidbits in my head such as "Isn't that right, Ookum Snookums" which I break out for my wife from time to time to get a laugh or two.