37 months - lift the flap book. Kids always seem to enjoy these but I find them quite dull. Open this to see, look inside to find... Can't anyone write better dialogue that incorporates flaps? ( )

I truly hate assigning so low a rating to this book, because our family likes the Berenstain books, and the stories in these staples of children's literature tend to be entertaining and well written. However, this particular entry in the series is inferior to its brethren books. The story describes Brother and Sister Bear venturing into a haunted house, in search of their cat who preceded them. It features lift the flaps, usually in the places the bears are searching around or under or behind. Eventually, they do find their cat, sitting with another Bear, the owner of the house. Brother and Sister proclaim that she is a nice bear after all, even if she does live in a haunted house, and promise to visit her again.

The concept behind the book is fine, and could lead to a good story about mistaken first impressions and being carried away by one's imagination. However, these themes are not developed at all. In the first place, the house is not scary. No ghosts, no creepy shadows or spooky animals jumping out at them, nothing moving or floating around on its own. It is just some armor and dusty furniture and lots of cute and cuddly animals hiding in strange places. For a story about a haunted house, this book is disappointing. It is absurdly unscary. This could have been explained if the house had an unfair reputation of being haunted, and the author included some of the stories the bears had heard that led them to this conclusion, but no such framework exists.

The second major problem is that the bear at the end of the book is simply a picture and a few sentences. The story does not characterize her at all. It never even mentions her until the end. Why didn't Brother and Sister know about her? Why does she live in this house? Why is she even a nice bear? We don't know, because the book doesn't tell us. It left me caring absolutely nothing about her, her house, and the entire surrounding adventure. Basically, this book is a dashed off story that uses familiar characters and the lift-the-flap technique to generate interest, and tie into a popular holiday motif. We ordered it through a school book order form, and I was excited to read it to my daughters, but it was a sad disappointment. ( )