In Defense of the Berenstain Bears and other Mediocre Books Your Kids Like to Read

Last week, Jan Berenstain, beloved co-author of the Berenstain Bears series, died at the age of 88. Within a short time, along with many tributes to the author, a number of postings appeared that were less complimentary.

On Slate, Hanna Rosin wrote a post titled "Berenstain Bores," in which she responded to the end of Berenstain series with the words: "Good riddance!" and noted that among her friends, the series is known "as the one that makes us dread the bedtime routine the most." Drew Magary of Dadspin did Rosin one better with his "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, You're F----d: Ten Tips for Avoiding Terrible Children's Books," where he observed that "with the wrong book, reading to your kids is MURDER."

Now I don't dispute that the Berenstain Bears books (and others like them) are repetitive, formulaic, and clearly the bane of many parents' existence. I received any number of curses from my brother after I sent his kids a copy of Good Night, Moon, another book parents love to hate. “I've had to read that book a thousand times,” he complained, “and you can't skip anything because they stop you and remind you that you've left something out.”

Believe me. I've been there and done that, reading some book that bored me to tears but enthralled one of my children. One of them had a particular fondness for a large format version of Disney's The Fox and Hound, which I hadn't liked much, even as a movie. The print version seemed to go on and on forever, and I kept finding myself lapsing into a monotone, or trying, surreptitiously, to skip a few pages.

But after parenting three children, all of whom had very different reading styles and varying degrees of interest in reading, I've learned one thing: It doesn't matter whether your kids are reading endless variations on If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, or the Twilight or Hardy Boys series. If they are reading at all, be grateful.

And do not mock them for it, or even make snide remarks you think they might overhear. Save your mordant wit for your online community or a night out with other parents sans kids.

I myself confess to having devoured the entire Encyclopedia Brown detective series, which merits just as much of the kind of mud people have been slinging at the Berenstain Bears. But it did get me started on reading for clues, which meant I was actually paying attention to what I read, instead of racing through to the end.

I also owned one Berenstain Bears book and read it many times. But it never engaged my interest like other book series such as Curious George, Madeleine, or Barbar the Elephant, whose plots I actually remember because they were full of characters who were mischevious, courageous, and unconventional.

So for all of the parents out there who dread having to read books that bore them to their children, I have to say, “Get over it! Reading to your kids is not about you. It's about fostering their love of the written word until they reach the age where they have some discrimination over what kind of writing is good and what is mediocre.”

The fact is that children love repetition, and they love the comfort of knowing exactly how a story will end, however, ridiculous or contrived that conclusion may seem to their parents.

I can still recite (with pleasure):

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines
Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines
In two straight lines they broke their bread
And brushed their teeth and went to bed.
They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad
And sometimes they were very sad,
They left the house at half past
In two straight lines
The smallest one was Madeleine.

And I immediately call up the densely illustrated pages that represented a Paris I did not yet know, with its bridges crossing the Seine, and the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame in the distance. I only knew that this was a magical city, and that I wanted to be Madeleine, standing up to bullies like The Black Hat, telling a tiger “poo poo” and balancing precariously on a railing next to a river.

Now that my youngest is 12 and doesn't have the patience to listen to me reading aloud or the willingness to listen to an audiobook in the car, I have only memories of what it was like to cuddle up in bed with the kids and their stuffed animals and their books, usually a pile of them.

Although my recollections cast a rosy glow over these occasions, I know that there were plenty of evenings when I was too tired or cranky to do them justice, and when I resented having to read a particularly dreary book one more time. But it must not have been too awful because I can scarcely bring any of those titles to mind.

So why am I not concerned about kids wanting to read repetitive, trite books full of cliches and stereotypes?

Frankly, it's because what kids read is the least of our problems when it comes to reading. We live in a culture where reading rates, especially among young people, have decreased substantially, as more and more kids spend their time on "media" rather than on books.

Children six and under spend more than twice as much time with "screen media" (2 hours) as they do reading or being read to (39 minutes). And it gets worse as they reach their teen years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of June 2011, those between the ages of 15 and 19 spent an average of six minutes per weekend day reading for pleasure and over an hour on the computer or other media devices. At that rate, it would take you weeks to get through a magazine, much less a book.

When I read statistics like these, I know that all those hours spent in bedtime reading were worth it because it allowed me to give my children the foundation to keep them reading as adults, whether they choose to read mysteries, graphic novels, thrillers, or comic books. And whatever they read, I won't sneer at them for their choices. I'll just be grateful that they're still reading.