The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Vacation: I Am Papa Bear and I Owe My Family an Apology

We had a trip to Disneyland planned last winter. It would be neither my nor my wife's first choice for a vacation as we collectively don't like crowds or getting price gouged. We are definitely not Disney Adults as they are called either. However, my daughter is now in that prime Disney age. She's familiar with a lot of the stories, she likes rides, she still believes in the magic that Disney sells about what going to Disneyland is like. So here we are planning a trip that we know will include some of that magic that she wants, but also a high probability of some stress and disappointment. Well, there is no better book to prepare her for that potential outcome than The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Vacation.

The less popular of the "Too Much" books in our house, which is the only reason it got pulled first.

Leading up to the trip we pulled this one off the shelf numerous times and used it as an opportunity to talk about how sometimes things don't go according to our expectations (without of course directly saying Disneyland will be a cluster). It's a great book to kick off our Berenstain Bears Marathon.

The Opening Rhyme

A good mix of your classic rhyme with a bit of foreshadowing. Like some others that we'll get to, the foreshadowing might lead you down the wrong path. This vacation almost certainly did not turn out to be the most fun. Memorable? Yes. But definitely not fun.

The trip goes downhill, on schedule

A quick synopsis of the story: Papa Bear has a grand idea for a vacation up in the Great Grizzlies for the family to get a true wilderness experience. The trip gets off to a bad start almost immediately when the cabin they get to looks absolutely nothing like the ad Papa saw in the paper and it only goes downhill from there. From some serious self inflicted wounds such as Papa's terrible wilderness stew to mother nature clearly conspiring against them with mosquitos everywhere along with heavy rain, the bear family eventually decides that it's probably time to go home. Mama and the cubs do their best to stay troopers along with Papa despite such a disastrous trip.

The Title Page

A bit of an unreliable witness here again as it would appear that we are seeing things through Papa Bear's perspective. Although with a few hints at reality, as Sister Bear ominously catches sight of a herd of mosquitos heading their way.

Overall I really like this one and here is why: Because I can absolutely see myself being Papa Bear here. I'm the dad who likes to plan trips. Not only trips but also adventurous ones that bring the family out of their comfort zone. I've also had a few that have definitely not gone as planned and you get into the moments where you really do just want to call the whole thing off. At times we have, other times we've powered through and sometimes it actually does get better. I think this is one of the best portrayals of Papa Bear though. While he is definitely blindly optimistic about how things will work out, he's also trying to be a positive presence on the trip and trying to model the behavior that when life gives you lemons you can make a bit of lemonade. Even if in this case, that lemonade tastes just as bad as that Wilderness stew.

Wilderness Stew, and the night that follows it. Two pages that do more damage to a vacation than the rain does.

I also think they are doing something a bit unique to these books in the introduction of the camera. It is woven into the story throughout, the "Click" capturing these moments, and then when the book is ending we get to end on a high note with the Bears being able to enjoy the memories of what was such a disastrous trip. It's a different way to tell the story than a lot of the other Berenstain Bears books. It almost feels like we are hearing about this vacation that had already happened awhile ago from the Bear Family told through these old pictures that they have from the vacation. It also put a lasting impression on me that whenever something really terrible happens, but where you know it'll be funny in the future I get this urge to say "Click! Goes the Camera" as if taking some mental permanent snapshot of the moment in my head to revisit later.

As a read-aloud, this one is easy money. Papa gets my standard overconfident-trip-planner voice, which requires exactly zero acting on my part, and every "Click" is a free little beat you can lean on. By the third read you'll have a whole delivery worked out for it.

When we pull this one out

So the moral of the story here is somewhere along the lines of something that is intended to be good/fun may not necessarily end up that way, but that this is OK. That's a good lesson for kids to have. They are introduced to new experiences all the time and they won't always know how to process a situation where the reality of it becomes much different than what they envisioned in their head beforehand. And for a series that usually likes to hand you the moral directly, this one gets there in a softer way. It's the camera. You get to the end and the Bears are laughing at pictures of a trip that was miserable to live through, and the point just kind of shows up on its own.

I pull this one out anytime we are about to go on a family vacation, but also whenever we are about to do a new experience with them. Take this past weekend. This book came out because the next day we were going to the state fair with rides, and junk food, and all types of fun things to see. But it could also be overwhelming with crowds. They could get sick to their stomach. They could get frightened from a ride. This helps put that into perspective a bit.

A field guide to Papa's face

The illustrations are also great throughout. Every single one of the early pages is filled with huge smiles from Papa, huge smiles from the cubs who are feeding off of Papa's enthusiasm, a few cautious if not smug looks from Mama bear. Then we get a slow progression throughout as the open mouth smiles just become closed mouth smiles, which turn into worried faces, eventually frowns, and then one of my all time favorites, the thousand yard stare from Papa after a 2nd horrible night's sleep.

I hate to admit that I have looked exactly like Papa Bear when something I planned collapsed around me.

I also want to do a shoutout of the Bears "pucker" faces when eating the sour berries. Whenever I eat something sour I try to copy that face now. My son has also adopted it, with a lot more commitment than accuracy. This is late-80s Stan and Jan, and the faces really are the show here. You could hand this book to someone who can't read and they'd still get the entire arc of the vacation.

Whenever I eat something sour I try to copy this face now. I am not proud of it.

The suspiciously agreeable cubs

Ok so where do I think this one maybe misses the mark. I'd start with the attitudes of Brother and Sister Bear. At no point in this disaster of a vacation do they ever really seem to do any type of complaining. Papa essentially poisons them with his stew, they didn't get to do basically any fun activities, and they probably didn't get any sleep for 2 nights in a row. Now maybe other people's kids are like this and for that I say, congratulations to you. But my kids would have been absolutely complaining the whole time wondering what in the world was happening to them. "I want to go home" would essentially be the only thing that would be coming out of their mouth. Maybe part of the moral the story is trying to get across to kids hearing the story is that they should be resilient and just tough it out because not every experience will be enjoyable. Even the ones that were intended to be so. If that's the case then I can agree with that point, but I couldn't help thinking that had I been in Papa Bear's situation I would have been subjected to a lot more, let's call it direct feedback, on my performance as trip planner.

As for Disneyland, it happened, and it was mostly magic with some cluster mixed in, exactly as forecasted. Somewhere deep into a line for a ride that broke down while we were standing in it, I said "Click! Goes the camera" out loud to nobody in particular. My wife did not laugh. But we've already retold that broken ride story at dinner twice, so the book knows what it's talking about.