THE BEAR MUSEUM

What fun! What excitement! What a nuisance. At least that's the way Sister Bear feels. Sister is upset by all the attention her new baby sister is receiving. If it isn't being fed, burped, or diapered, it's being dandled, cuddled, or kitchy-kitchy-kooed.

Yes, Sister's pretty fed up with the fuss everyone's making over the new baby. Even the dolls make her angry, because they remind her of the baby. Then Sister gets a special homework assignment and, with a little help from wise old Mama, comes to believe that this new baby might just be a nifty addition to the Bear clan.

The book, along with the prequel titled "The Birds, the Bees, and the Berenstain Bears," published earlier the same year (2000), was intended to address many of the issues that were neglected in the classic "Berenstain Bears New Baby" (See The First First Time Books). In "The Birds, the Bees, and the Berenstain Bears," readers are left with a cliffhanger! Readers had to guess whether it would be a boy cub or a girl, and they were invited to send in suggestions for the its name.

I"Baby Makes Five" does illustrate the jealously many kids may feel when attention is suddenly focused upon a new infant. Mama Bear notices that there is a problem when Sister leaves new baby, Honey out of a drawing of her family for a school project. Sister explains that "there wasn't enough room on the paper!"

Mama pulls out the old videos of when Sister was a baby, and Sister sees that she got the same treatment that Honey is getting now. Sister goes back up to her room, and draws Honey into the picture.

It's bedtime, and Sister Bear wants to know, "'Mama,' said Sister, 'could we take a peek at the baby first?'"

See other exhibitions in the Bear Museum: