The Berenstain Bears

What Hacker News says

1. figersSep 2025
   I have daughters that love nancy drew novels, read to them before bed, currently on book 28.

   for a boy the Hardy boys is the equivalent..

   Also depends on the age but other good ones are:

   Artemis Fowl Alex Rider Berenstain Bears

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2. aapplebyOct 2025
   You certainly don't have to believe me, but that's what happened according to my mother. My mother was busy with my twin sister and didn't have time to read to me, so I would take all the Berenstain Bears books and sit down on the couch and try to sound them out. After a few weeks of that I told my mother that I didn't need her help because I could read now. She didn't believe me and had me read some other children's books - turns out I could.
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3. kstrauserAug 2023
   Here's a whole list of 'em: https://pen.org/banned-books-florida/

   There are the usual ones like "My Two Dads and Me" and "My Two Moms and Me". "The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question", LOL? "Hachiko: The True Story of a Loyal Dog", WTF. "Henry Aaron’s Dream", for people who find baseball offensive, I guess. "The Life of Rosa Parks". "Thank You, Jackie Robinson"; more baseball hate. "Unstoppable: How Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team Defeated Army" shows some people hate football, too.

   Each of those is appropriate for kids, and I'd love to hear specific reasons why someone believes one isn't.

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4. 99_00Aug 2023
   They obviously have reasons. Without looking at the book, we can't say if it should be in schools or shouldn't. When explaining Racism to Grade 2 students great care must be taken. Imagine being the only black kid in all white classroom. You know you look different. Everyone does, but no one thinks anything of it. And then they tell you that you are systematically oppressed, and that your race, not your character, is the characteristic that will define your life experience. Good Luck kid!

   Also, we don't see the list of other civil right books that may be in classrooms.

   But the fact that "The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question", a book about God, was rejected suggests that this isn't some conservative conspiracy.

   In fact, it sounds like a moral panic from the left.

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5. a_e_kFeb 2023
   I've taken the "Oh no! Sorry. That book was accidentally destroyed maliciously," approach before.

   (Interestingly, my own parents took that approach with the Berenstain Bears for exactly the reason you describe.)

   But I'd prefer to either read something to my kids as originally written or not read it all. Or as they get older, read the original but with a parental aside on how it was a product of its time. (Might as well make it an opportunity for a brief history lesson.)

   I'm definitely not a fan of this "force push" approach to updating established older works.

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6. lprdMar 2021
   Prices are skyrocketing now for these books. I suspect The Berenstain Bears collection are next, along with whatever else cancel/woke-culture deems unacceptable for society.

   https://twitter.com/jeremykauffman/status/136751012770473984...

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