The Berenstain Bears' Bedtime Battle: Finally, a Berenstain Bears Book Written for Me. That's the Problem.

This book almost feels as if it's written for the parents more than the kids. It's a very accurate book when it comes to the bedtime routine with kids, the constant struggle to get them through all the various steps you need to get them through in order to get to bed. Where the book really becomes the most interesting is purely from the parent's perspective: me reading this and then seeing my own life through the bears' experience.

When my kids read this one, they definitely get enjoyment out of all the naughty games that the bears play before bed. I think they see themselves in it quite a bit: not wanting to quit playing, having to clean up their toys, moving really slowly because they want a prolonged bedtime. If it was my kids, the bath would go a little different. They'd complain a lot about getting into the bath, but then once they were finally in the bath, they would complain a lot about never wanting to get out. That's actually a lot more reminiscent of my own kids.

The Opening Rhyme

It's a decent rhyme, but very defeatist. Parents don't have to lose this battle!

I think initially, when you see it, you figure it's going to be about the bears struggling a lot during bedtime, but then there would be some resolution after the fact. Mama and Papa work through some routine that works a lot better for them, the kids buy into it, and then the bedtime routine becomes a lot easier. That's not at all what we get here. We get essentially just a snapshot into the bears' daily life as Mama and Papa Bear experience bedtime just like any parent who's ever done bedtime with kids before. The kids fighting it, the parents trying a lot of different strategies to make it go faster, some of them working, some of them not working, then ultimately resulting with the parents just falling asleep before the cubs.

The Title Page

Mama and Papa are looking particularly angry here and what is that, naked Bears? (gasp)

Papa is almost as much of a problem as the cubs

The strategy I found the funniest, and probably the most realistic for me as a dad, was when Papa Bear tried to turn the cleaning up of the toys into a game, like a race. Oftentimes with my kids, in order to get them upstairs to finally start getting ready for bed, we'll turn it into a chase-me-up-the-stairs kind of game, where either I'll chase them or they chase me. From my perspective it's clearly just a really fast way to get them upstairs, but for them, it's a game. And then eventually it becomes a routine that we do every single night, and if we don't do it, they'll remember and we'll have to actually go back downstairs and do it again.

I think that's what Papa is trying here, and it's pretty funny how it falls pretty flat. The kids just really don't buy into it, and he's stuck there having cleaned up all the toys himself for the most part.

Papa doesn't look particularly motivated to get the kids to clean up their toys. Every parent recognizes this battle between wanting to move quickly and getting kids to do things themselves.

There's also a little disagreement between Mama and Papa about the different things that need to happen before bed. Mama was the one who initially prompted them to clean before they went upstairs. Maybe Papa's just like, I want to get them up to bed, I don't care about the toys. Mama wants them to be responsible about picking up their stuff, but ultimately the bears aren't really held responsible for cleaning up. Papa does most of the work.

It's like this book was written on my life. Papa Bear is me, giving two children who are much too big for it piggyback rides up the stairs.

We get Papa Bear at his most aloof throughout the whole book. He's the one giving them the piggyback ride up the stairs that they ask for. He's the one who, in the bathtub, adds a cupful instead of a capful, making a huge mess, with Mama gently calling him out: if you just read it more carefully, it would be a capful.

Papa Bear, losing his focus to get the Bears in bed for a bit and just being a kid himself. Again, it's like this book is based on my life.

Then in the process of trying to pop the bubbles, slipping and falling, one thing after another. Then all of a sudden he's angry about the color of the toothpaste, squeezing it as hard as he can, and a big, quote unquote, white snake comes out, probably making a bigger mess that he has to clean up. Is Papa maybe too much of a bumbling fool here? Probably. They're leaning into it pretty heavily. That's something we see in some of these later books, where Papa becomes almost a caricature of himself, particularly foolish, and then every once in a while they'll do a role reversal where he's the Mama Bear and Mama Bear is the Papa Bear. That's not what we get here. Papa acts a fool for the most part and probably causes as much damage trying to get the cubs in bed as he does good trying to move them forward.

And the cubs just keep constantly asking for more things. At first Mama and Papa want them to go to bed, and they say, oh, we want to say our prayers first. Then they do that, and then, oh, we want you to read us a story. Oh, but we want you to read us different stories. One thing my kids would also ask for somewhere in here is a night snack, right after they brush their teeth, probably. That's how it always goes. Let's brush our teeth. Oh, yeah, and by the way, I want a night snack. Which sometimes we give in for, and that means you just have to brush your teeth a second time, unfortunately.

I'm with Brother Bear on this one, "The Three Little Kittens" looks like an absolute bore.

You have to supply the moral yourself

You can have a conversation with your kids about this, pointing out, hey, this is where the cubs could be doing a lot better about getting in bed sooner by cleaning up their toys when they're asked. It would really be up to the parent to parse it out themselves and decide these are the lessons I could bring down to my kids that exist outside this book.

That makes it harder to find an opportunity to pull it off the shelf. Let's say bedtime is a struggle in your family. If you pulled off this book, I don't think the book itself is providing any resolution where the kids go, oh, I'm not doing things the right way, this is how I should do it. If anything, it just reinforces their behavior: hey, see, the cubs are doing it, and there are no punishments really. So it would be strongly up to the parent to use their own discretion, reading it and saying, this is a good example of a poor bedtime routine, here's where the cubs could have done better. And then maybe even, for the kids' benefit, call out how the parents could be doing better and having more structure or, in Papa's case, making a lot fewer mistakes along the way.

Exasperated faces, single spreads

Illustration wise, it doesn't really stand out a whole lot. We definitely get exasperated looks from both Mama and Papa as they trade off who the exasperated one is, and a lot of tired moments from both of them, just typical parents desperate to get their kids in bed, struggling to do so. Trying to work together as a team at times to make it faster, but the teamwork not always being the best, Papa Bear not necessarily upholding his end quite as well. There's a playfulness there too, particularly with Papa, who'll oscillate between a really grouchy face as he's trying to get the cubs to do something and a more playful, gets-sucked-into-a-kid's-world type of face.

There are definitely not as many illustrations here as we get in a lot of other Berenstain Bears books. Something most of the books have is, on each individual page, a lot of different images within circles or spread out throughout the page, almost like a lineage of the story progressing. Here we're generally just getting a single spread, or maybe two images across a spread. Which is okay in this instance, because there's not a lot going on with the plot, so there's less to show. But then again, for the big images we do get, there's not an extreme amount of detail outside of a few good facial expressions along the way. They do a good job supporting the story, but there's nothing a kid is going to want to spend a ton of time staring at or that's going to get imprinted in their mind.

I'm not the target audience, and that's the problem

I'd say this book for me is probably just a two out of five. I'm tempted to almost give it three, but ultimately Berenstain Bears books are written for kids, not adults. From a kid's perspective, it's just not as interesting of a book. They might laugh a little along the way at Brother and Sister prolonging bed, but there's nothing that happens that's really of high interest to a kid. It's more just getting that insight into a day, and they're not learning that going slow during bedtime is bad.

Where the book is at its best is from the parent's perspective. When I read this, it's extremely realistic. It reminds me a lot of my own parenting experience, the struggle that bedtime is, always wanting that routine to go smoothly, trying a lot of strategies to get it that way. It's just that I'm not pulling out Berenstain Bears books to read on my own. Well, actually, maybe I do. That's just what I did right now, I suppose. So maybe I'm the one in a million adult who actually will do that. But for the most part, they're children's books. They should be designed for children, and I don't think this book necessarily is.