Berenstain Bears - Opinions

Opinions

The Berenstain Bears series has been called "syrupy", "unsatisfying", "infuriatingly formulaic", "hokey", "abominable", and "little more than stern lectures dressed up as children's stories."

In a 1989 editorial titled "Drown the Berenstain Bears", Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer lamented the popularity of the books, writing that "it is not just the smugness and complacency of the stories that is so irritating," but the bears themselves, particularly "the post-feminist Papa Bear, the Alan Alda of grizzlies, a wimp so passive and fumbling he makes Dagwood Bumstead look like Batman." He described Mama Bear as "the final flowering of the grade-school prissy, the one with perfect posture and impeccable handwriting...and now you have to visit her every night. The reason is, of course, that kids love them. My boy, 4, cannot get enough of these bears."

The New York Times' Janet Maslin expressed similar sentiments in a 1988 review of the Berenstain Bears' video series, calling the bears "a thoroughly disagreeable bunch." Noting that "the nagging, scolding Mama Bear is a pillar of pettiness and conventionality" who "seems to care more about how the Bears' tree house looks than whether anyone is happy inside", she wrote, "some viewers may find it a genuine relief when the cubs demolish Mama's favorite lamp."

Upon the death of Stan Berenstain in 2005, the Washington Post published an "Appreciation" piece which many Post readers found surprisingly unappreciative in its tone. Written by Paul Farhi, who had previously rebuked the Berenstain Bears as the most popular example of a lamentable and misguided "self-help" genre aimed at children, the 2005 piece revived his earlier sentiments:

The larger questions about the popularity of the Berenstain Bears are more troubling: Is this what we really want from children's books in the first place, a world filled with scares and neuroses and problems to be toughed out and solved? And if it is, aren't the Berenstain Bears simply teaching to the test, providing a lesson to be spit back, rather than one lived and understood and embraced? Where is the warmth, the spirit of discovery and imagination in Bear Country? Stan Berenstain taught a million lessons to children, but subtlety and plain old joy weren't among them.

Subsequent letters from readers condemned Farhi for expressing such harshness toward the recently deceased; one wrote, "In the name of fairness, please be sure to allow the Berenstain family the opportunity to someday retort in Farhi's obituary." Readers also defended the books' "warmth" and their enduring popularity among young children.

Following Jan Berenstain's death in 2012, acclaimed children's author Jerry Spinelli said that "the Berenstains made a wonderful and lasting contribution to children's literature." Author and professor Donna Jo Napoli said, "Those bears have helped so many children through so many kinds of challenges that kids face, in such a cheerful and kind of energetic way." The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri wrote that the books were "timeless, timely, and kind-hearted, like all the best literature," and acknowledged the Post's 1989 piece by saying, "This is one of the times the kids have the right idea and Charles Krauthammer does not." On the other hand, Slate's Hanna Rosin revived Krauthammer's complaints, drawing criticism for writing of Jan Berenstain's death, "As any right-thinking mother will agree, good riddance. Among my set of mothers the series is known mostly as the one that makes us dread the bedtime routine the most." (Rosin subsequently apologized and admitted she "was not really thinking of as a person with actual feelings and a family, just an abstraction who happened to write these books.")