Little Brown Bear Won’t Take a Nap by Jane Dyer has a lot of good qualities about it. However, I would be very reluctant to recommend this book as one fitting for any elementary classroom. Meant for grades K-2, this story is about Little Brown Bear who, rather than take a nap during winter, goes on an adventure to find the geese that travel south for the winter. After a while, he begins to miss his parents and travels back home with the geese. The story ends with Little Brown Bear’s mother waking him up at the end of winter.
Adventure and curiosity are two concepts that I would really encourage for all ages. Everyone should want to explore and find out more about the world around them, and this is a lot of what this story is about. Little Brown Bear is curious about the world around him and goes out to find out what is out here. In the end, he comes home because he misses his parents; this concept would also be very valuable in perhaps discussing family and the importance of it. As well, the illustrations throughout the book are vivid and beautiful and complement the story well. I feel the beauty and the wonder that Little Brown Bear feels at the sights around him. I especially loved the snapshots of the different things that he did while he was at the beach. However, despite this, I cannot in good consciousness recommend this book to other teachers.
Despite its benefits, I still feel as though the rebelliousness of Little Brown Bear in refusing to go to sleep would be too influential to a child’s mind. Little Brown Bear refuses to listen to his mother telling him that he needs to sleep and then sneaks out of the house when his parents go to sleep. When he comes home, his mother is under the impression that he had taken a nap and Little Brown Bear fails to correct her on this. I feel that this part would be more detrimental than anything else. Rebelliousness to this extent could have far-reaching consequences that future teachers would not want to deal with. Perhaps I am looking too harshly or negatively at what the underlying themes are in this book, but at the same time, there are so many picture books that younger students will enjoy just as much; why invite the potential for a negative effect?
I invite you to share your thoughts on this opinion.
I'd have to agree with you about it encouraging rebelliousness! It also might encourage them to go out and explore, but this could be bad if they chose to do it alone, with nobody knowing where they are, so many places are just to dangerous for that!
ReplyDeleteI haven't read the book, but I don't think all books about rebellion are necessarily bad. I agree that stories where running away was the right thing to do could set a bad example, but it sounds like he learned his lesson and realized that not following directions wasn't as great as he thought it would be when he missed his mom and went home. Of course, I pulled a similar stunt when I was only about 2 1/2, so maybe I am not the best person to opine on this.
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