The Three Bears' Halloween
Papa Bear puts on funny ears, Mama Bear dons a curly wig, and Baby Bear dresses as a tiger. This can only mean one thing—Halloween. The family goes trick-or-treating, and Baby Bear's bag fills up, because, he says, he's so scary. When the family arrives at a house decorated with cobwebs and skeletons (with a witch hiding in the bushes), it's the bears who get nervous. Still, they go inside, gobble Halloween treats, and break a chair in the living room; and when they hear someone in the house, they run upstairs and dive under the covers. Someone creeping up the stairs casts a frightening shadow. Baby Bear yells, "Someone is a big, bad witch," but children will recognize Goldilocks under the witch's costume and welcome the chance to figure things out before the bears do. Thickly applied acrylics make for sturdy paintings, but the many holiday accoutrements (jack-o'lanterns, costumed friends, Halloween decorations) lighten the pictures. Good fun for story hours, this works as an introduction to fractured fairy tales. Cooper, Ilene