We can continue our tour of memorable kiddie characters, this time with a stop in the land of the Berenstain Bears...
THREE PROS
*The story builds to a decent crescendo as we follow the march of ants across America
*All of the animals are drawn in a very likable manner -- I kind of want to adopt the alligator for myself provided we did a little dental work on him
*Amusing = an anteater standing at the anthill who has brought his own bowl, spoon, and picnic blanket
THREE CONS
*One too many "repeat" pages, where they literally just cut and paste the words from earlier
*I don't know how far the ants really walked, but crossing by an alligator and Arizona makes me wonder just where these ants had been at the start (perhaps a summer home in Florida)
*I might be remembering incorrectly, but do the Berenstains have some weird fascination with worms in all of their books (probably because they are easy to draw) -- this book has an angleworm in it
ONE DAD'S OPINION
A likable enough book with nothing overly egregious about it, but not exactly a winner. You just kind of get the sense that the Berenstains were crawling into bed one night when it dawned on them that they could take their franchise bears, put them in a series of 26 books centering around the alphabet, and laugh all the way to the bank. While you can't fault them for this, you also don't have to support their retirement. Choose something else if given the choice between this book and a few others.
Buy / Borrow / DONATE / Destroy
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