Summary: This story is about the transition from summer into the school year and not only about how students feel but what parents feel as well. It begins with all the bears discussing their favorite seasons and why they love those seasons. Papa bear loves winter because of the snow, the cubs love summer because of all the fun things and then they guess mamas favorite season is spring. She corrects them and tells them that her favorite season is fall, because then the cubs go back to school and mama has time to do her own things. As the story progresses the kids then have to go back to school, they are sad but mama is happy. When the kids are at school mama bear gets bored and misses the cubs and the cubs do perfectly fine at school with no problems that they think will happen. At the end of the story the kids one home and they are all happy with the cookies that mama made in her free time.

Uses. The uses for this book would first of all be discussing going back to school and would be fun to read one of the first days back. It also would be good to use to discuss seasons at that each season certain things happen just like the bears talk about in the beginning of the book.

The message of the story is that every day is full of new experiences and adventures. I like this book because of the writing and illustrations. The writing flowed well because of the rhyming used throughout the book for example, “When the summer ends and the air turns cool. The time has come back to school”. I like the rhyming because it develops a pace for the reader and it allows the reader to expand their vocabulary by exploring different word families. I also liked that the illustrations were very bright and colorful. It attracts the readers to explore the pictures. The more interested the readers are in the pictures the more they may be able to link the illustrations with the text. ( )

This would be a good book for teacher or even parents to use at the start of a new school year. It has a pretty strong message of "school is fun" and tries to reinforce that even though it can be difficult, it can prepare you for great things. Interspersed throughout are other more subtle themes like being well behaved. The rhyme and flow of the words worked well most of the time and it could be read aloud fairly easily. The subject matter is appropriate for the intended age group and students should be able to relate well to situations in the book. Berenstain Bears is one of my childhood favorites, and although I've never read this one, I think it was a nice addition to the collection. ( )