The Berenstain Bears and the New Girl in Town

BROTHER BEAR IN LOVE?
Just yesterday he hated girls. Now he can’t take his eyes off Bonnie Brown. And she thinks he’s pretty cute too! But she’s a Grizzly and he’s a Bear. Will the old feud between the two clans keep the young lovers apart?

So is the plot of The Berenstain Bears and the New Girl in Town. Guess who the “new girl in town” is. Yes, it’s Bonnie Brown.

I’m 99% sure that grizzlies are bears. However, Wikipedia says that grizzlies live mostly in Canada, so maybe the “old feud between the two clans” is a metaphor for the old feud between the United States and Canada. Maybe.

Or maybe not. By clearly delineating Grizzlies and Bears, Stan and Jan have introduced the element of race relations into the Berenstain Bear mythos. A year after this book was published, Stan and Jan published The Berenstain Bears’ New Neighbors, which I have not read, but the cover features the Bear family watching a family of Giant Pandas move in next door, and I strongly suspect that the Giant Pandas are meant to be Asian. Possibly Chinese. I guess that means that Bears are white and Grizzlies are black. And Polar Bears, Eskimos.

I don’t recall seeing Bonnie Brown in the First Time books, so I think this titular new girl in town is the first major character to be introduced in the Big Chapter books. If she’s a Grizzly, and Grizzlies represent black people, does that mean Brother can never go back?

The story sting on the front page goes like this:

“I guess we’re going to kiss,” said Brother.
They kissed.
Brother blushed.
They kissed again.
Brother blushed again.
They kissed again and again and again…

The illustration is actually three small illustrations showing Brother and Bonnie kissing. Each time, Brother is blushing and getting hot under the collar, and each time Bonnie looks more and more annoyed. She even crosses her arms while kissing him the third time.

The summary on the copyright page says, “Brother Bear’s budding romance with Squire Grizzly’s niece helps bring about an end to the fierce feud between the Grizzly and Bear clans. The same feud that the back cover blurb mentioned? The summary just gave away the ending.

The story begins by hitting us over the head with the fact that it’s spring. There are flowers and birds and boys and girls walking hand in hand. Yes, somehow spring makes children fall in love with each other. Brother, being a boy his age, finds all the love disgusting, as does Cousin Freddy. Sister, however, is so happy she starts singing:

“In the spring
a young bear’s fancy
lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

Some Berenstain Bear fans might recognize those lyrics. They were used in the song that played at the beginning of the old Valentine’s Day Berenstain Bears TV special, The Berenstain Bears and Cupid’s Surprise. Brother and Freddy, though, don’t appreciate the shoutout. “Beeswax,” and “double beeswax,” they say.

Sister teases that the boys are afraid of girls. Noticeably, Freddy does not argue, but Brother rejects the idea of being afraid, and says that some of his best friends are girls. That’s when a girl named Babs Bruno walks up, and in an insufferably sweet way, asks Brother to help her with her homework. Brother nervously agrees to call her in the evening.

Babs isn’t the only girl cub interested in a boy. Sister, Brother, and Freddy notice Queenie McBear walking arm in arm with Too-Tall Grizzly. They have an on-again off-again relationship, and right now it’s really on.

“Suddenly, a strange and disturbing thing happened,” the narration tells. Too-Tall’s father, Two-Ton, drives up next to the cubs in his pickup truck, snatches Too-Tall up, shouts something at Queenie, and drives away. When Brother, Sister, and Freddy ask Queenie what happened, she explains that Two-Ton said something unusual: “It wasn’t right for a member of the Grizzly clan to be seen with a member of the Bear clan.” Racism!

But the cubs forget all about this shocking display of prejudice, because at the beginning of the very next chapter, Sister goes right back to teasing Brother about his popularity with the ladies. The Bear family is lounging in the living room. “Mama was sewing and Papa was resting in his easy chair,” the narration says, even though the illustration clearly shows Mama knitting. Papa gives the boy a little ribbing before the phone rings. It’s Babs.

Although he’s embarrassed, Brother does his best to actually discuss the homework.

Brother grabbed his homework and returned to the phone. “Number one… let’s see… the answer is forty-two. Yeah, you use length times width—that’s the formula for the area of a rectangle. Do I know the formula for WHAT? For a HEART?”

Romance with the power of math.

Brother insists that Babs is even better at formulas than he is, and hangs up. Papa can’t help kidding Brother, but his jovial attitude quickly turns sour when he takes a sip from his newly poured glass of milk. He spits it out in disgust. “Onions!” he yells. His milk tastes like onions.

How does milk become onion milk? Papa has already heard the tale at Zeb’s hardware. There is a clover meadow between Farmer Ben’s farm and the estate of Squire Grizzly. I don’t know how common it is to find farms right next to palatial mansions, but there you have it. Usually, Farmer Ben grazes his cows there because his own land has onion grass on it, but Squire Grizzly has recently maintained that the clover meadow is Grizzly territory, and has erected a fence around it, cutting it off from Farmer Ben’s cows. “He says no member of the Bear clan has any right to it,” Papa explains.

Papa and Mama explain to the cubs that all of this animosity is a result of an ancient feud between the Bear family and the Grizzly family. Now this is confusing. The Bear family is the Bears, right? Mama Papa Sister Brother. Are they related to Farmer Ben? Does the whole of Bear Country belong to only two families? Is everyone the product of inbreeding, like royalty? Or does everyone in Bear Country pledge allegiance to one family or the other? Oy.

The Bear and Grizzly families, Mama and Papa explain, were some of the first settlers of Bear Country, and they did not like each other in the least. Brother and Sister are the great-great-great-grandcubs of Ebenezer Bear himself. Ebenezer always got into spats with old Abner Grizzly, fighting over pasture, boundaries, water, and even what to name the place. Clearly, the Bears won that fight. Pretty soon, even a war was fought, with Ulysses S. Bear leading the Bears and Stonewall Grizzly leading the Grizzlies.

I don’t know what to think of the Bear Country equivalent of the Civil War being a big family feud. It just makes it more confusing. Was I right? Everyone in Bear Country belongs to the same two families? Can you tell the difference between a Bear and a Grizzly just by looking at them? I don’t get it. I think I’m going to stick to treating them as two distinct races, just to make it easier.

Anyway, the feud was fierce, but everyone got over it eventually. In fact, no one knows how it started, proving just how silly the whole thing was. Mama and Papa trust that things won’t get out of hand. In fact, Papa is currently employed by Squire Grizzly to refinish some antique wooden furniture. Cue a phone call from Squire Grizzly calling the whole thing off. He shouts a few things through the phone at Papa, and Papa retorts, “Well that goes double for you and all the members of the Grizzly clan! … you… you… you MILK POISONER!”

Yeah, that’ll teach him, Papa.

Brother and Sister, for some reason, wait only until now to tell their parents about the Too-Tall incident. The feud has spread. Papa proclaims they will boycott all Grizzly businesses, including taking all of their money out of the Great Grizzly National Bank. He gets in the car and drives off to rally other Bears to the cause. Unfortunately, the tank is almost empty, and all of the gas stations in the area are owned by Squire Grizzly. In a time before the ubiquity of cell phones, Papa has to walk six miles to a phone to call Farmer Ben to bring him some gas.

The next day, Brother and Sister are eager to get to school, away from what they perceive as a silly grown-up problem. To their shock, though, the feud has trickled down. Cubs are fighting on the playground before school, even Too-Tall and Queenie. I guess there are too many parents like Papa in Bear Country.

In the illustration for this scene, I’ve noticed that all of the female cubs wear some form of head decoration. Ribbon, bow, headband, whatever. Thank goodness for head gear to provide some secondary sexual characteristics among bears.

And speaking of secondary sexual characteristics, all the fighting on the playground stops when one of Squire Grizzly’s limousines pulls up and deposits a pretty young female cub. “That’s Squire Grizzly’s niece, Bonnie Brown!” a well informed cub proclaims. She’s cute! She lives in a mansion! She’s a model! She’s Bonnie Brown, and she’s doing something funny to Brother.

As Brother Bear watched her, a funny feeling started in his scalp. It ran along his spine, then all the way down to the tips of his toes. Sister was about to ask him what he thought of the new girl in town. But one look at his love-struck face gave her the answer.

Brother’s infatuation with the new girl continues all the way through the homework review. When Teacher Bob asks him if he knows what shape the length times width formula finds the area for, Brother answers, “A heart,” making the rest of the class roar with laughter. Bonnie even gives Brother a friendly smile. Only in books does the girl seem to like best the boy who makes a fool out of himself. I wish being a buffoon scored me women.

At recess, during a game of fistball, Brother notices Babs Bruno watching from the sidelines, and it makes him uneasy. “Stop worrying,” says Cousin Freddy. “You know she has a crush on you. She probably just wants to moon at you while you get a hit.”

Is there a difference between mooning you and mooning at you? I hope there is.

But whichever the case may be, Freddy is wrong. Babs and a couple of her friends have shown up only to tease Brother. They begin shouting things like “Brother’s in love!” and “Brother’s got a girlfriend!”

I don’t understand this. At the beginning of the book, we saw cubs all over the place holding hands and getting touchy-feely with the opposite sexes, even Too-Tall. Now Brother has shown honest interest in a girl and they’re giving him shit for it. Are Stan and Jan just invoking typical child cruelty? Or were those earlier displays of affection totally insincere, and are they teasing Brother because they know he is?

Brother probably doesn’t care either way, because he escapes through a hole in the fence and runs to a pile of rocks in the woods. It’s his thinking place, just like in Winnie the Pooh. He doesn’t appear to do much thinking, though. Instead he sits there and mopes.

But there’s a cub coming to his rescue, and it’s Bonnie Brown. She saw the whole thing, she says, and can’t help but feel responsible. “But it’s not your fault you’re so… cute,” Brother sheepily tells her, to her delight. Bonnie suggests that Brother act nonchalant when the other cubs tease him; that he should “top them.” When he asks how, she says he can beat the teasing about having a girlfriend by actually having a girlfriend, and nominates herself as the sole candidate.

I’m having a bit of a hard time believing that Brother’s act-all-mopey-and-pathetic shtick can really win a girl’s affection. Oh well, this is only the Berenstain Bears.

Bonnie offers to walk back to the playground with Brother holding hands, and even tells him she thinks he’s cute too. Then, she lands a peck on his cheek, and he blushes the hell out of the red color spectrum. This leads to one of the silliest-looking illustrations ever seen in a Berenstain Bears book. Trust me on that one.

I want to mention that Bonnie’s secondary sexual headgear is a bandana. I guess it could have been meant to be a ribbon, but it looks a like Rambo-style bandana. She looks like she should be lugging a huge machine gun around.

The teasing doesn’t stop for Brother, but somehow walking around holding hands with an incredibly cute girl numbs the effect. He even walks Bonnie home, and I have to say that the illustration for the scene is adorable. As they walk, Bonnie, who has a little bit of acting experience, asks Brother about the spring school play coming up. He gives her a rundown of the plays they usually perform, and they all have Berenstain Bearified names: Robin Hood and his Merry Bears, Grizzlystiltskin and the straw of Gold, King Arthur and the Bears of the Round Table, Indiana Bear and the Temple of Doom. I made that last one up.

Bonnie and her parents live with the Squire in his mansion, which is so big Brother actually seems a little afraid to go in. A servant greets Bonnie at the door, and while he has misgivings about Brother entering, he lets them go in. Even the entrance hall impresses Brother, and Squire Grizzly himself quickly appears at the top of the stairs, dressed like he’s ready to ride a horse. He seems jolly enough, and doesn’t even recognize brother as a Bear, but when Bonnie introduces him, the Squire goes nuts. “Called me a milk poisoner, his father did!”

Wow, I guess Papa really knew how to insult the guy after all.

Bonnie begs her uncle to calm down, but the Squire chases Brother right out the front door, and even as Bonnie cries out to Brother not to go, he’s scared as hell. As he runs the path to the gate, though, Bonnie appears on a balcony of the mansion, pleading one more time for Brother not to leave.

I’m getting a real Romeo and Juliet vibe from this book so far. Two star-crossed lovers whose own families are at each other’s throats, complete with balconies even.

Bonnie plucks a flower from a vine growing on the balcony and tosses it to Brother, who promptly takes it home and stares at it longingly.

But Brother is angry with Squire Grizzly, so angry he admits everything to Sister. And Sister, with remarkable clarity for someone her age, seems to get that Brother and Bonnie only wanted to be friends until Squire Grizzly forbade Brother from seeing her, and that makes him want to “go steady.”

Sister explains this to Mama, who is more surprised at Brother’s turnaround from “love is disgusting” to “Oh Bonnie” than anything else. Papa takes the news about Brother’s newfound romance less well. He takes the opportunity to insult the Squire a few, but Mama interjects that Brother’s crush on Bonnie is a good thing, as it will help him get over his shyness toward girls.

Not that I approve of Papa’s prejudices, but I think Mama should have been smart enough to know that argument wasn’t going to mean squat. Imagine it’s 1961 in Atlanta, and there’s a boy who’s in love with a girl of a different race, and his racist father is very upset. Do you think if the boy’s mother said, “Wait, don’t get mad, this will help him get over his shyness toward girls,” the father would change his mind? I’m of the NO opinion on that one.

Brother walks into the room all sweet and innocent, but no one has a chance to confront him about Bonnie, because the sounds of a bulldozer being revved up come through the window. Angry shouting and police sirens enter the mix as well. The Bear family runs outside to find that Farmer Ben just bulldozed down the Squire’s fence around the clover meadow. Talk about fighting the power. Squire Grizzly climbs up onto the bulldozer and starts whipping Ben with his riding crop (he carries that thing everywhere). Mrs. Ben, brandishing a hoe, tries to poke the Squire off. The Squire’s wife, “all dressed up for afternoon tea, was shaking her parasol at Mrs. Ben.” I can just imagine Squire Grizzly thinking, “Dear, you are 100 percent useless.”

Chief Bruno and Officer Marguerite arrive and manage to break up the fight, and the Bens and Grizzlies eventually simmer down and go back to their homes. The book doesn’t say, but they probably went to small claims court.

The feud is in full swing. All around Bear Country, people who used to be nice and friendly with each other are now getting into shouting matches. Biff Bruin’s pharmacy does not allow Grizzly clan members. Ralph Ripoff is going door to door selling buttons with Bear and Grizzly pride slogans (what does that make him?).

Despite all of this, the cubs in Bear Country School have gotten over all of their differences. Now that I think about it, all of the bickering among the cubs stopped when they started teasing Brother about his crush on Bonnie. Maybe if Brother and Bonnie go into town and start being lovey-dovey, the feud will end. Sure, it won’t work for Papa Bear and Squire Grizzly, but they’ll still get about 99 percent of the way there.

Wait, wasn’t there something about a spring play coming up? Oh yeah, there was, and now the cubs in Teacher Bob’s drama club are brainstorming. First of all, what play should they put on? Too-Tall suggests Robin Hood and his Merry Bears, with his sights set on playing Robin Hood himself. Too-Tall as Robin Hood, let that one sink in a while. Or Too-Tall in the drama club, for that matter.

Teacher Bob has his own agenda, though. He points out the obvious fact that a vicious feud is ripping its way through Bear Country, and then brandishes a large book called The Plays of William Shakesbeare. Yes, Shakesbeare. There is even a picture of him on the wall, and I have to admit, if William Shakespeare was a bear, he’d probably look like the picture.

The cubs think Shakesbeare is boring, although they know nothing about his plays. Teacher Bob names the play Romeo and Juliet, and he tells them, no, this one’s not boring at all. It’s about two young lovers.

“That sounds like two cubs we know!” Babs says. Brother blushes. Too-Tall starts smacking the back of his hand going, “I love you! I love you!” which I guess he intends to be insulting towards Brother, but I think he’s just making a fool out of himself.

Brother gets mad at Too-Tall, and threatens to knock him on his “big tin can.” Well, no one ever said Bear Country was known for its great euphemisms. Teacher Bob, though, calms everyone down, and gets back to how exciting Romeo and Juliet is. There are swordfights, poison, and death in the play, all because of a feud between two families. Maybe, he suggests, putting on a play where everyone dies will depress everyone out of the feud. It sounds like a good plan to me.

So the cubs decide to put on Romeo and Juliet. Tryouts for Juliet are first, and guess what? Bonnie gets the part! That means that, despite being really embarrassed by the idea of playing Romeo to Bonnie’s Juliet, Brother has got to try out for the part, because the idea of anyone else playing Romeo to Bonnie’s Juliet is worse. By the way, that’s not me being snarky, that’s exactly what it says in the narration.

Brother’s reading is pretty bad, but Teacher Bob gives him the part because he knows that’s what everyone wants. Again, that’s what the narration says.

Cousin Freddy ends up being in charge of set design and stage manager. He gets so into it, he even builds Juliet’s balcony himself. Unfortunately he sucks at his job. When they first rehearse the balcony scene, the balcony breaks as soon as Bonnie sets foot on it. The line, “Romeo, Romeo,” turns into a cry for help as she goes tumbling down to the stage floor. But as luck would have it, she lands right in Brother’s arms. That’s the way Shakespeare should have written it, I think. Juliet’s balcony should have collapsed under her, depositing her into Romeo’s arms, and splinters for everyone.

Cousin Freddy is certain he’ll get it right next time, but there’s still one tiny problem. There is a scene in which Romeo and Juliet kiss, and every time Brother kisses Bonnie, he blushes. It makes a pivotal scene come off as farce, and Teacher Bob is worried. If Romeo and Juliet makes everyone laugh, the parents watching the play won’t learn their lesson.

Bonnie assures Brother she has a plan to solve this, and they agree to meet at his favorite pile of rocks. What’s Bonnie’s plan? Simple, they just keep kissing until he gets used to it. Brother, unfortunately, is nervous. Didn’t Mama say something about him getting over his shyness? It looks like she was way off on that one. Bonnie, for her part, will have none of it.

“We’re not practicing kissing, really. We’re rehearsing for a very important play. Opening night is only two days away. If you don’t learn to stop blushing when we kiss, the whole play will be a big joke. And if that happens, the stupid grown-up feud will go on and on and get worse and worse. And we won’t be able to be friends anymore. It will be hard for any Bears and Grizzlys to be friends anymore! What do you think of that, Brother Bear?”

If you remember the story sting, you’ll know that they continue to kiss and Brother continues to blush. As much as they’re probably enjoying it, they aren’t achieving their intended goal. Bonnie is full of plans today, though, and she’s got one more that could work.

Bonnie noticed earlier that when the cubs teased Brother about his crush, he blushed. Yet, he quickly stopped blushing when he got angry with Too-Tall. “The big creep got me so mad that I forgot all about being embarrassed,” Brother says.

Here is something else I don’t get. Why does Brother get all the teasing? Bonnie obviously likes him as much as he likes her. How come nobody goes, “Bonnie’s got a boyfriend! Bonnie’s got a boyfriend!”? What a double standard.

Whatever. Clearly, when Brother wants to get into a fistfight with Too-Tall, he forgets everything else. And that, Bonnie says, they can use. She suggests that when they kiss, Brother should imagine he’s giving Too-Tall a swift punch to the face. They give it a try, and it works! The illustration is actually a bit disturbing. Bonnie gives Brother a kiss and looks at him with satisfaction as he, with an angry look on his face, has a thought-bubble over his head depicting him knocking Too-Tall’s lights out.

And before you know it, it’s the night of the play. Feelings are so tense that the police have shown up to keep order. That turns out to be a good thing, because as soon as Farmer Ben and Squire Grizzly see each other, they start snarling. Somehow, things calm down enough that the play can go on.

The curtain rises and… there’s Freddy touching up the balcony. Oh Freddy.

Well, after Freddy embarrasses himself and his parents, the play begins.

The cubs did a wonderful job. The audience seemed to be under a spell. They barely moved in their seats. There were cries of shock and horror as the Capulets and Montagues fought with one another for no good reason. There were shrieks and gasps when the brave Mercutio was killed in a sword fight. And there were sighs of happiness when Romeo and Juliet met secretly.

The kissing scene goes well, even. Not only did Teacher Bob worry that Brother would blush, he also worried that Papa and Squire Grizzly would leap onstage and pull their cubs apart. Honestly, I could see that happening in real life with parents who hated each other, so I think Teacher Bob’s fears are well founded. Fortunately, all goes according to plan.

Hey, where are Bonnie’s parents, anyway? Aren’t they at the play, didn’t she say she was going to introduce Brother to them? What do they think of the cubs’ friendship?

The play is a success. Everyone in the audience gets over themselves and apologize to each other. The feud is forgotten about, and the audience gives a great ovation. There are ten curtain calls, TEN!

As celebration, a little party is thrown at Queenie McBear’s house. At the party, Bonnie and Brother, although now free to hang out together as much as they want, find that without the taboo they really don’t have much desire to be boyfriend and girlfriend. They agree that being regular old friends will do nicely. Personally, I think Brother is insane for passing it up, but that’s just me.

Queenie wants to play Post Office, except it’s some alternate version of Post Office where a boy and girl go into the post office one at a time. I’m not sure if Stan and Jan didn’t know the actual rules to the game, or if they intended Queenie to be a little rascal. Anyway, when Bonnie’s turn comes around, she invites Brother into the post office with her (it’s the laundry room). Since they’ve decided to be just friends, yet don’t want to disappoint the other party members, they fake it. Bonnie makes kissing noises while Brother “moaned as if he was having a great time.” They emerge having not swapped any spit and the other cubs are satisfied.

Brother, you piss me off. You had the greatest opportunity of your young life and you blew it just because perfectly good fruit didn’t taste as sweet as forbidden fruit.

In all seriousness, I give New Girl in Town two thumbs up. It was funny. Sure, the Bear/Grizzly thing can confuse you if you think about it too much, but it’s a simple thing to just not think about it all. They’re bears, after all, they don’t work the same way we do.

There is no particularly relevant moral lesson to be taught in this book, as there was in Drug Free Zone, except that it’s usually silly for families to feud needlessly. Maybe some young kids can appreciate the way Brother gets teased for his crush. Lots of kids get crushes but are too afraid of ridicule to even try being friends with the object of the crush, and that’s kind of tragic.

My one criticism is that the idea that a production of Romeo and Juliet can pierce through prejudice is a little too silly. I wish that the book would have done something a little more realistic in terms of handling the feud, especially with Papa. Papa was so much the bad guy in this book. Stan and Jan often like to make him the unreasonable one, but when you’re talking prejudice and feuding, it doesn’t come off as endearing as it has before. Maybe that’s the point, maybe his feelings are supposed to be silly and unfounded. I guess that works for kids. Beneath all of that, it’s an amusing story. Brother and Bonnie’s friendship is cute and innocent, and something about Brother’s arc in this book rings true.