What do you think?
Rate this book
Der kleine Bär bekommt ein Geschwisterchen.
Little Bear is excited about the new baby his family is expecting, until his friends at Bear Kindergarten tell him all the bad changes that the baby will make in his life
Hardcover
First published July 1, 1996
About the author
Jutta Langreuter
132 books5 followersJutta Langreuter was born in Copenhagen, spent her childhood in Brussels and lives in Munich with her family today. In her profession as a certified psychologist she has worked with children for many years.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 8, 2014
I actually have two of these Little Bear books (no relation to the classic ones by Maurice Sendak), but I can't find the other one where Little Bear goes to bed, so this one will have to suffice for a review (actually it caught a lucky break because iirc the other one was worse).
In case you haven't noticed, this book features bears as protagonists. Again with the bears? What is it with lame children's books and bears? Not that I have a problem with anthropomorphic animals in general, but I tend to think that if you're going to use animals to soften a story, it might be better to, you know, make them cute? Instead of these pudgy, awkward figures that crowd the uncanny valley to such an extent that it's become more of a plateau?
But I digress. Let's focus on the story. Little Bear decides one day at "Bear Kindergarten" to excitedly tell his friends that "Mama" has a baby in her tummy. His friends, who for some reason do not have any younger siblings of their own, proceed to give him obnoxious warnings that he'll soon be dealing with "stinky diapers and crying all the time," and worse yet that there will be "no more Mama when you need her" (sound like any kids you know? Me neither). Little Bear is skeptical, but his classmates continue to be little shits to such an extent that when he gets home he starts pestering his mother in her 70's-style house-gown (which is a given for any children's book written in the late 90's). His mother, rather than handle this gracefully, gets upset, but is comforted by her more sensible husband, who then proceeds to fix the situation by bribing his son with ice cream.
Little Bear returns to kindergarten shortly thereafter and announces that "My papa dropped me off today" (I mean, why would he have ever done that before?) because Mama is in the hospital, which gives his "friends" ample opportunity to be even more over-the-top unrealistically obnoxious ("'Your whole life is probably ruined now.' 'I know,' sighed Little Bear.").
In a stunning POV-switch, we cut to the kindergarten sans-Little Bear, who we are told has been absent for several days (so is this a thing? Keep your older kid home from school when the new baby comes? No offense to anyone who does this but right after my second child was born, "watching another kid at the same time" was not high on my to-do list). "Maybe he's not here because all the baby poop gave him a headache!" suggests one scatologically obsessed young man, just in case any readers had forgotten that babies poop in the intervening ten pages.
But no, it turns out that when Little Bear returns, he thinks his new baby is great, and now all his friends are jealous and desperately want to see the baby for themselves (because, again, only one family per kindergarten is allowed to have multiple kids...one has to wonder if this story is really a coded rebuke of the People's Republic of China's population control policies). Mama Bear complies and brings in her newborn baby to be touched by a crowd of germ-infested five-year-olds for completely unfathomable reasons, and Little Bear gets to indulge in some well-deserved "I told you so"-style rubbing-in with his classmates, despite the fact that he cracked under their peer pressure in moments and never had any faith in his baby brother's ability to not be a poo-spewing attention-hog.
Anyway, like I said, this is the better of the two Little Bear books I've read, and while it's not completely terrible, it's still not very good, the translation from the original German makes the language feel dated, and it's going to make your kids more freaked out about having a sibling than if you just hadn't read it in the first place. So...don't.
In case you haven't noticed, this book features bears as protagonists. Again with the bears? What is it with lame children's books and bears? Not that I have a problem with anthropomorphic animals in general, but I tend to think that if you're going to use animals to soften a story, it might be better to, you know, make them cute? Instead of these pudgy, awkward figures that crowd the uncanny valley to such an extent that it's become more of a plateau?
But I digress. Let's focus on the story. Little Bear decides one day at "Bear Kindergarten" to excitedly tell his friends that "Mama" has a baby in her tummy. His friends, who for some reason do not have any younger siblings of their own, proceed to give him obnoxious warnings that he'll soon be dealing with "stinky diapers and crying all the time," and worse yet that there will be "no more Mama when you need her" (sound like any kids you know? Me neither). Little Bear is skeptical, but his classmates continue to be little shits to such an extent that when he gets home he starts pestering his mother in her 70's-style house-gown (which is a given for any children's book written in the late 90's). His mother, rather than handle this gracefully, gets upset, but is comforted by her more sensible husband, who then proceeds to fix the situation by bribing his son with ice cream.
Little Bear returns to kindergarten shortly thereafter and announces that "My papa dropped me off today" (I mean, why would he have ever done that before?) because Mama is in the hospital, which gives his "friends" ample opportunity to be even more over-the-top unrealistically obnoxious ("'Your whole life is probably ruined now.' 'I know,' sighed Little Bear.").
In a stunning POV-switch, we cut to the kindergarten sans-Little Bear, who we are told has been absent for several days (so is this a thing? Keep your older kid home from school when the new baby comes? No offense to anyone who does this but right after my second child was born, "watching another kid at the same time" was not high on my to-do list). "Maybe he's not here because all the baby poop gave him a headache!" suggests one scatologically obsessed young man, just in case any readers had forgotten that babies poop in the intervening ten pages.
But no, it turns out that when Little Bear returns, he thinks his new baby is great, and now all his friends are jealous and desperately want to see the baby for themselves (because, again, only one family per kindergarten is allowed to have multiple kids...one has to wonder if this story is really a coded rebuke of the People's Republic of China's population control policies). Mama Bear complies and brings in her newborn baby to be touched by a crowd of germ-infested five-year-olds for completely unfathomable reasons, and Little Bear gets to indulge in some well-deserved "I told you so"-style rubbing-in with his classmates, despite the fact that he cracked under their peer pressure in moments and never had any faith in his baby brother's ability to not be a poo-spewing attention-hog.
Anyway, like I said, this is the better of the two Little Bear books I've read, and while it's not completely terrible, it's still not very good, the translation from the original German makes the language feel dated, and it's going to make your kids more freaked out about having a sibling than if you just hadn't read it in the first place. So...don't.
March 11, 2015
This would be a great book to give to a student who is in the same situation and may feel the same way. This book really does a good job at showing different emotions one may feel in an experience like this. This is a great book to have in my family section of my library.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews