Asymmetrical read and liked Ceridwen's review of The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight (First Time Books):

"Warning: this review contains a lot of swearing, for a children's book review. It can't be helped. Sorry.







I've always joked about having a home-wide ban on the Berenstain Bears, by which I mean I'm dead...more Warning: this review contains a lot of swearing, for a children's book review. It can't be helped. Sorry.







I've always joked about having a home-wide ban on the Berenstain Bears, by which I mean I'm deadly fucking serious. However, I've never actually told the kids about this ban, not wanting to give these books the dangerous sparkly allure of the forbidden, layering transgressive delight onto all the nose-picking, goody-goody bullshit nestled in their pages. So it probably shouldn't have come as a huge shock when the boy trundled home from school the other day with this book in his library bag. “What did you get from the media center today?” I ask. “Look!” he says, pulling out a book about my hirsute nemeses from his bag. Butter wouldn't melt in my mouth.

There's a couple of ways this could have gone. I could have had an all-out Mommy Dearest style attack, tearing the book from his hands and raving about unrealistic depictions of parents and children while I stomped up and down on the book, its pages squishing and tearing as they ground into the wet leaves littering the alley behind our house. I could have called and made an appointment for counseling, as this is clearly what I need. I could have pretended not to see the book, feigning blindness to the whole thing. Thankfully, I try to walk the freaking path of the Buddha, so I took the middle road, which is saying, “Oh that's nice,” surreptitiously reading the book, and then freaking out on the Internets in a profanity-laden book review. Maturity, I have not. Fine, whatever.

When two small bears
Don't get along,
The grownups worry -
What went wrong?

Arg! Kill me now! Kill.me.now. I have two kids, coincidentally a boy and a girl, and they fight all the fucking time. Not in a particularly nasty way, just in the regular Bickersons kids way, where the girl touches the boy's Legos, and the boy loses his mind, and it's like the Legos have a big red button on them that says “Push this to make the boy freak out.” It's satisfying in a Levi-Strauss kind of way, and I can see why she does it. (But for heaven's sake, don't touch the fucking Legos.) So when Mama Bear whistles to get their attention and asks them all Socratic-like what the Bear kids are fighting about, and the Bear kids can't remember, and then they all have a sit-com style laugh about how foolish it was, it makes me want to kill. Kill, I say.

This is not helping. This is not something I can use. This is utopian garbage, where useless perfect people – er, bears – have non-problems and then work them out using the magic of rationalism. Childhood is irrational. Parenting is irrational. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all hold hands and sing? Yes, it would, and we will, and that will be fun for a while. But it doesn't change the fact that there is still a red button on the Legos, a button that is just begging to get pushed, and the answer lies somewhere in the murky territory of “don't push that” and “don't freak out so much.”

I wish, oh man I wish, this had been some sort of distopian reimagining of the Berenstain Bears, where Stephen King dropped a dome over their godamn tree house, and they had to decide who to eat next. Four bears enter, no bears leave. Now that's a book I could get behind.

P.S. When girl bear goes into the bathroom to – and I quote – brush her fur, that's when I freaked the fuck right out. No fur brushing! Or fine, fur brushing, but no fur brushing where I can see. Fur brushing is a special, private thing for girl bears to explore in the privacy of their own rooms. (less) "

Asymmetrical read and liked Amanda's review of French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure:

"Read in a moment of desperation at my parents' over Xmas vacation. (Picked up from the book exchange in the basement of their NYC building.)

The basic message is that French women don't get fat because they move more than American women, e...more Read in a moment of desperation at my parents' over Xmas vacation. (Picked up from the book exchange in the basement of their NYC building.)

The basic message is that French women don't get fat because they move more than American women, eat good food but in moderation, and enjoy life. I disliked the generalization that American women don't to cook at home, cook what's in season, use good quality ingredients, and to eat in moderation and to try to move more. I disliked her assumption that anyone who exercises in the gym must be in pain and suffering and hating every moment of it. Guiliano is a French transplant who lives in NYC, where it is subjectively easier to move more in a day if one chooses. If one lives in the suburbs or most American cities, I'm sorry "walking to work" is simply not an option. Plus some of us simply enjoy exercising.

Other things I hated: yes, we should drink more water. Her suggestion to drink a "paper cup full" everytime you pass the water cooler and to carry around bottled water is simply disgusting in terms of any sort of environmental concerns. Additionally, her disregard for vegetarianism as a common "fad" among teenage girls was disappointing as well as her lack of knowledge regarding how much protein we need AND her belief that one *needs* dairy to be healthy.

Yes, eating should be pleasureable. Yes, we should not deny ourselves things we enjoy or label food as "good" or "bad." Yes, incorporating movement into daily life, outside the gym, is a good goal. Yes, we should consume foods that are in season and as close to their natural states as possible (ie few processed foods). Yes, we should cook our own foods more.

But all those lessons are common sense and available in most books on nutrition and weight management that are written by individuals better informed by their training as nutritionists or dieticians. Don't read this book. Read Skinny Bitch instead.(less) "