Age Range: 5 - 8 years
Grade Level: Preschool - 3
Hardcover: 32 pages
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-0374349080
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 0.4 x 11.3 inches 

 

A small bear goes for a stroll in the park with his parents, leaving their bowls of porridge cooling on the kitchen table. Meanwhile, a girl with golden hair is hopelessly lost in a big, frightening city when she comes across a house with the door left invitingly open. Inside are three bowls of porridge in the kitchen, three chairs in the living room, and three comfortable-looking beds upstairs, and no one seems to be home . . .

 

From Booklist
Browne’s wry fractured fairy tale sets the Goldilocks story in a contemporary urban neighborhood and tells it from the dual viewpoints of a lost little girl and a baby bear. The girl’s story, shown on left-hand pages, is wordless; sepia-toned pictures show a bespectacled, blond kid who gets lost in the city streets, enters a house with an open door, eats porridge, breaks a chair, and snuggles up to nap. On each facing page, Baby Bear tells his parallel story, illustrated in full color, of walking in the park with Daddy and Mommy and then coming home to find his breakfast gone, his chair broken, and someone asleep in his bed. Browne adds notes of realism and melancholy to the traditional story. Goldilocks is alone in a city filled with abandoned buildings, while Mommy and Daddy Bear complain and ignore Little Bear. The colloquial narrative adds further immediacy, and it also lightens the mood, while the climax, in which Goldilocks returns home to her mother’s embrace, reveals shining gold under all the sepia brown.