to be sick to back teeth of bloody bears!

[Notcopingwellhere]

My DS is almost 3 and like every other child that age loves a story or twenty at bed time.

I often go to the library to stock up and it has really struck me how many kids’ books are stuffed to the brim with bears. Bloody bears everywhere. Polar bears, pandas, hibernating bears, bears with guns (I am looking at you Janet and Allan Ahlberg), bears eating ice cream/honey/porridge/berries/marmalade sandwiches but never baby seals or weasels. Surely we have reached Peak Bear?!

And don’t get me started on the foxes- one minute a fox is about to eat a mouse in the Gruffalo then you start the next book (by the same author!) and Mr Fox is wearing a bow tie and living in a house with a mouse who is always losing his socks.

I thought I quite liked animals until I had a child. Now I never want to see another pig for as long as I live.

Thank goodness for Sue Hendra- Simon Sock is my saviour.

AlbusPercival I suffered peak vintage vehicle with DS1. When DS2 lost interest in Thomas at an early age I could not have been more pleased.

Has anybody tried to read the Martin Waddell Bear books? Now that's a lot of bears-per-minute. The word bear completely loses its meaning by the time you get to the end.

Oooh, look what I found in the smilie list - a

Thanks DuchessSybil. I had to mute it though as the digeridoo soundtrack was too annoying!

He reads it too slowly for my liking, but you have to admit - not a bear!

I quite like a monster. OK with dragons too. And story dogs too, oddly, even though I am not a fan in real life. Though no Spot book ever lived up to the original “Where’s Spot?” I was disappointed to find.

Mr Men are good too.

My son had an absolute obsession with owls.We had so many books about owls, stuffed owls , owl ornaments owl pictures and went to a nature park near us practically every week because they had owls.Then Harry Potter came with more owls. He will be 21 tomorrow.Where did the time go?

Wait until the joy of Fairy books starts hitting ... there was an all out brawl in the school library over the bloody fairy books ...

I remember reaching peak dinosaur. We have every single dinosaur from a particular plastic range of them.

The irony here is that for the vast majority of human history people have been terrified of bears, for good reason. They are wild animals who have been known to kill and eat people. They are not large, lovable dogs who live in the woods.

gizmodo.com/can-you-be-friends-with-a-bear-1792296384

To be honest that’s why I loved them as a child. They could bite people heads off. I was an odd child.

When I was a child and people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to say ‘a polar bear so I could bite peoples heads off’. I still do.

Good point MissConductUS. I knew Teddy bears were connected to Theodore Roosevelt and I just read the Wikipedia page to refresh my memory- very interesting that the concept stemmed from a cartoon of Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear that had been pre-caught for him. My sense is that it was less about sympathy for the bear and more about it not being sportsmanlike to pretend you had bagged your own bear when you had not.

Fuck unicorns. Seriously. DD1 has reached the point of drawing horns on any horse and claiming it for unicorn-kind.

I'd quite love a wee spot of Paddington.

Sorry didn’t see it said DS not DD ....

I remember having to make the Lego manual interesting reading and he would take his Lego instructions to bed ...

You Choose book was a winner for us ...

theknack he’s been quite excited about a fairy book they’ve been reading at nursery!

Wait till they discover screen time and Xbox

I miss miss miss the bear days so much

< Buys Simon sock book > misses point of thread.

Don't wake the bear, hare is good

I have a few Thomas books in a pile to give away to a friend. Its so boring. I can manage books about vehicles, but I dislike that train. Maybe Harry and the dinosaurs is in the pile to go too.

DS doesn’t seem to have heard of unicorns yet- the other day he saw one in a book and called it a horn pony 😀.

OP you need this No Bears book and you'll be happy forever.

OK with dragons too

Oooooh no, no, no, no! Dragons and dinosaurs 24/7 here.

Actually I forgot that the main supporting character in Simon Sock is a sodding teddy!

I think it's a bear conspiracy. My sat nav is constantly telling me watch out for bears... "bear left", "bear right"... Every. Single. Day.

Fluffy

After the bear stage comes

1. Unicorns
2. Ponies
3. Harry Potter
4. The opposite sex.

DGD was seriously confused and I think a bit pissed off when she spoke to real life squirrels, cats, dogs, birds and they refused to talk back. It made me realise that virtually all her books contain animals of some kind. Bears, owls, zoo creatures, flying things, insects.

It was last year, when she was 2 and she walked up to some ducks and asked , “Hi guys would you like some food”, and stood there expectantly awaiting their answer, that I realised there was an issue.

YAdefinatelyNBU!!!

Bears are well overdone. Although I STILL have a hardback copy of Winnie the Pooh stories (and I'm nearly 45)

And Elephants, cats, dogs and sheep.

Maybe it's because bears are cuddly?

But then so are sloths. And they are cuter imo than bears. Where are the Sloth themed stories?

Bring in some Sloths!!

Bears are much better than Thomas the Obnoxious Tank Engine.