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CHIMNEY FARM BEDTIME STORIES by

CHIMNEY FARM BEDTIME STORIES

By

Pub Date: Oct. 20th, 1966
Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

In the dim light of evening, these little tales of Mr. Bear and Jimmy Chipmunk et al, which Mr. Beston told to his children and Miss Coatsworth (Mrs. Beston) has set down, may have had a quiet charm, but between the hard covers of a book they seem all situation without any plot. A farmer writes to a mail order house for a pair of ""elegant pants"" and receives an elephant instead; the King and Queen of Polar Bears ride to a royal wedding on a barge of ice; a bear loses and finds his favorite book, the Lives of Bad Bears. A typical example is the story of the discontented bears who were changed into cats: a little boy awakes in a strange house inhabited entirely by bears, who cook and clean and garden; though they do these things well, they are discontented, because they do not like being bears; taking a book of enchantments, the boy changes them all into cats, and from then on, ""they...were happy all day long."" It's minimal magic with little motivation (the bears had objected to the house shaking under their heavy tread) and the same can be said for the other stories in the collection.