Customer Reviews

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?: 25th Anniversary Edition

5 star:		(150)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Much like the jazz song accompanying my worst nightmare, in which every band member plays something different all at the same time, seeing one of my twin daughters approach me out of the corner of my eye carrying "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" brings about a cold sweat and makes me want to reach for a tube of airplane glue and a warm lager. I originally checked this out of our local library for them in the hopes of temporarily weaning them off the glass teat world of Barney, Little People, and Kipper, but little did I realize they would take to it like flies to garbage, memorizing most of it within a few hours. Shortly thereafter, I tried to hide the book but it kept reappearing until the mere sight of it became about as welcome as Roger Clinton backstage at a Marilyn Manson concert. My selfish motives and petty complaining aside, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" is full of colorful pictures, an easy-to-learn rhyming scheme and by its very nature is trance inducing to most kids under the age of 3. For that reason alone, it's a godsend.

This is one of the first books we've been reading to our 6 month old son. Our son is having trouble with his vision and the Dr recommended challenging his sight every day to help the eye muscles grow strong. This book has bright, bold contrasting colours and simple illustrations that are easy to focus on. The rhythmic text keeps his attention and is great for learning lots of basics, such as colour, animals, and hearing basic language sounds.

This is another time-tested classic by author/illustrator Eric Carle. It opens asking a brown bear what he sees, and he replies, and the next page is the animal that he saw, and he is asked what he sees, and so on and so on.
As you might expect from Carle, his simple but wonderful illustrations are a big part of the appeal of this book. Each two-page layout is a colorful animal centered on a white background, and that's it. Kids will effortlessly learn colors and animal names as you read it to them, and maybe a little sequential logic. I'd say it's a great book for ages 1 through 5. (At least, my five-year-old still likes to sit in while I read it to my two-year-old).
-Andrea, aka Merribelle

My 20 month-old boy asks me to read him this book at least a few times everyday. It's the perfect book for children who just started talking a little or are about to. It's repetitive, rhythmic, teaches them colours and names of animals and the bright, colorful pictures are sure to keep their attention. It also trains their memory as he tries to remember which animal comes in next page. A classic in our library.

This book is a great first book to read to baby. The text is rythmic and the illustrations are bold, simplistic, and big enough to attract young babies' attention. My son, at 4 months, enjoys this book.

Here's the way to keep this book fresh after multiple readings....start at the last page and read it backwards! My son loved it backwards and years later still can remember me reading "Bear Brown, Bear Brown, See You Do What?"

For those cave dwellers amongst you who've finally crept out of your hermit-like existences to gain a little knowledge about the wide world of children's picture books, the name "Eric Carle" will be unknown to you. For everyone else in the universe, however, Mr. Carle is undoubtedly one of the best known illustrators of the Western world. The father of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and the more recent "Slowly Slowly Slowly Said the Sloth", his earlier work, "Brown Bear", is a sweet simple storyline that remains timeless.

In this story, different animal characters, cut cleverly from a dazzling array of colored papers, tell the viewer what it is that they see. The cat sees a dog, the dog sees a sheep, the sheep sees a goldfish, etc. Now when I said this story was timeless, I wasn't kidding. Honestly, I'm having a great deal of difficulty finding ANYTHING about this story that's going to date it in one or two hundred years down the road. Originally published in 1967, the book is particularly impressive because of the shot of children it cuts to towards the end. Suddenly the viewer is observing kids of a myriad of races and skin tones. In 1967. And these are not your white-kids-painted-brown type pictures either. And they're not all just black or white! There's the most surprising thing of all, to my mind. In an age when illustrators were having a devil of a time remembering to even include black kids in the occasional book, here we have a book that is including everything from Asian to Native American children, front and center.

On a completely unrelated side-note, the mother in this book bears a striking resemblance to a LOT of very hip mommies these days. From her dark rimmed Harry Potteresque glasses to her well coiffed hair, this is a mother on the go.

To be perfectly blunt, I'm not an Eric Carle fan. He bores me, and I have distinct memories of finding "The Hungry Caterpillar" annoying as a child. But at the same time I'm having a lot of difficulty finding anything at all wrong with this book. It's not the most exciting picture book on the market today. It will not grab you, necessarily. It doesn't demand the spotlight or find itself in intellectual discussions about the nature of animal representation for the pre-adolescent set. It's just a good book with a nice plot and pretty pictures that teach kids about colors and animals. And doggone it, that's good enough for me.

I originally thought my son would not like it,it looks so simple, but I saw so many good reviews about it. Lucky it turns out he really likes it. And also I think another fact he like it is because I bought the boardbook, so he really likes to turn the pages. lol

By far my best therapy tool... the children love the repetition and pictures. Children from ages 0-5 love it!!! I use it with all my kiddos.

Many parents have applauded their young child as they master the wonderful story BROWN BROWN, BROWN BEAR, WHAT DO YOU SEE? Now, Macmillan Young Listeners has taken the story one step further. This collection contains the audio book read by the actress Gwyneth Paltrow, as well as an oversized paperback copy of the famous story.

The book contains all the wonderful and simple illustrations that Eric Carle is famous for. It's the complete repetitive story of all the animals that are found, leading up to the surprising ending.

However, what this package has that previous versions of the story had been lacking is the enchanting reading of the story by Ms. Paltrow. Using her soft and flowing voice, the words that could be trying to a parent who has heard the story many, many times becomes a new and wonderful experience.

The book and CD will surely keep little ones occupied. Whether sitting on the bed or riding in the car, the repeating "what do you see" will keep them laughing and guessing for hours.

Reviewed by: Jaglvr