![]() Papa glumly acquiesces to the new maternally mandated regime. Each commandment is accompanied by a penalty (''wash dishes, empty garbage, beat two rugs'') for those family members who dare transgress. Consider, the well-known ''Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners,'' wherein Mother, fed up with rudeness, sets down a new set of family rules of conduct. The raging offense of the Berenstains is the post-feminist Papa Bear, the Alan Alda of grizzlies, a wimp so passive and fumbling he makes Dagwood Bumstead look like Batman. That is a common affliction of children's literature. The Berenstains make the begging easy: the back cover of some volumes are thoughtfully filled with full-color covers of the others plus the cheerful admonition, ''Collect them all!'' It is not just the smugness and complacency of the stories that is so irritating. ![]() I know I speak for thousands, perhaps millions of other parents who share my hostility to these lumbering cuddlies but who cannot say no to a child who begs for just one more dose. If you do, you too have suffered through volume upon volume of the life of the insufferable Bear family (generically labeled Father, Mother, Brother and Sister), the eponymic creations of Jan and Stan Berenstain. ![]() ![]() If you don't know what I am talking about, consider yourself lucky. ![]()
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