The Berenstains’ B Book by Stan and Jan Berenstain, 1971.

This book is called the “B Book” because everything in it start with the letter ‘B’. There’s a big brown bear, a blue bull, and a beautiful baboon dressed like a ballerina.

They blow bubbles on a bicycle and bump into a black bug with boxes of bananas and a bunny with a basket of bread because they’re going backward.

The chaos continues with a bus full of baseball players and beagles playing banjos and bagpipes. Where will it all end?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

At first, it seems like there’s no plot to the book, more about emphasizing all the words that start with ‘B’, but there is a point at the end. All of the chaos is what broke baby bird’s balloon. That’s what everything is building up to! The plot/punchline at the end of the story is cute, and it gave me a chuckle. It isn’t really important, though. It’s just a nice touch at the end. Overall, it’s a cute book with a lot of things for young children to spot in the pictures, and adults can use the story to emphasize ‘B’ words and sounds for small children.

This book is by the authors of the Berenstain Bears series, but even though they have their last name in the title, as they do with all the Berenstain Bears books, the characters from the Berenstain Bears don’t appear in the book. There is a bear in the style of the Berenstain Bears riding the bicycle and blowing bubbles, but that’s it. In this case, the name “Berenstain” just refers to the authors, not their best-known series.