The Berenstain Bears Visit the Dentist

The Berenstain Bears Visit the Dentist by Stan and Jan Berenstain is a very short picture book for 5 year olds about a wobbly tooth and a check-up.

What happens

Sister Bear wakes up with a loose tooth. Brother tells her to push it about with her tongue, explains the tooth fairy business again, and goes back to sleep.

The tooth will not come out. Not at breakfast. Not at school. It is still firmly stuck when Mama walks them both along to Dr Bearson's.

Brother goes first, showing off very slightly, because he has done this before. Sister stands on a stool and watches.

This is where the book does its actual work. She looks into her brother's mouth with the little mirror and announces that it is a cave with a tongue in it. She goes along the tray naming the tools, the picks, the scraper, the water squirter, the air squirter. Then she spots a yanker and goes ULP.

Brother turns out to have a cavity, so the drill comes out. He says "Ummm" bravely and the whole thing is over inside a page.

Then it is Sister's turn, and the dentist does not touch the yanker. He grips the tooth with a piece of gauze and gives one tug.

It is a small book and it finishes properly, tooth under the pillow and all. A few hundred words from start to end, so it works as a bedtime read or as something a new reader can get through alone and feel rather pleased with themselves about.

Read it before an appointment rather than after a bad one. It is reassuring rather than soothing, if that makes sense. Sister is nervous the whole way through, and the drill and the yanker are both shown before they turn out to be nothing much. A child who is already frightened of the dentist may fix on those.

For everyone else the nerves are exactly the point. Sister worries, watches carefully, finds out what all the equipment is for, and discovers there was not a great deal to it.

One small thing for a British reader. This is American, so the tooth fairy leaves a dime and there is a school bus and pajamas in it. Nothing your child cannot work out, but you may well get asked what a dime is.

There is also a nice throwaway moment where Sister asks for a lollipop for being good and Brother points out that lollipops are not exactly the thing at a dentist's.

What to read next

If that goes down well, the Bears go to school is the same trick played on a different first day. Sister is starting kindergarten, is not at all sure about it, and gets taken to meet the teacher beforehand so she can see the paint pots and the barrel of clay for herself.