The Berenstain Bears and the Bike Lesson

Stan and Jan Berenstain's The Berenstain Bears and the Bike Lesson is a giggly rhyming story for 5 year olds about a dad who is very keen to show his son how it's done.

What happens

Small Bear gets a brand-new bike. He wants to ride it RIGHT NOW. But Father Bear has other ideas. First come the lessons, he says, and then the fun.

So Dad hops on to show him lesson one, how to get on. Then lesson two, how to stop. Then how to turn, what to do about puddles and how to go downhill (straight through a chicken yard, as it turns out).

Every single lesson goes wrong for Dad. And every time, he says "let that be a lesson to you". Small Bear, very politely, agrees that it was a very good lesson. Then he asks the same question again. May I ride it now?

That's the joke, and little ones will be in on it from the first page. They'll know way before Dad does that he's the one who needs the lessons. By the third or fourth "Not yet, not yet", your listener will probably be shouting the answer with you.

It's short, bouncy and full of repeating lines, so it's a lovely one to read aloud. Small Bear's patience is heroic (who else would wait that long for a new bike?). And Dad's total confidence, right up until the next crash, is very funny.

One thing to know before you read it together. The last lesson is about always riding on the right-hand side of the road. That's the American rule, and Dad gets muddled about which hand is his right anyway. In the UK we ride on the left, so you might want to mention that if your reader is about to set off on a real bike.

If you've got a child who is itching to learn something new (a bike, a scooter, anything with wheels), they'll recognise Small Bear's feeling of "come on, let me have a go!"

What to read next

For more of Small Bear and his very sure-of-himself dad, try The Big Honey Hunt. Dad won't just buy honey from the store like Mother Bear says. He's going to follow a bee to its tree, however many wrong trees it takes.