I recently had the opportunity to read a ton of The Berenstain Bears books (hooray for my library having a good chunk of these available for the Kindle), one of them being The Berenstain Bears' Dollars and Sense. Sadly, this one did not meet my expectations. Normally these books have some sort of good lesson that can be learned. However, I felt that this one wasn't on par with the rest of the series. Brother and Sister are having money problems. As soon as they get a couple dollars, they instantly spend them and are broke again. Papa tries giving them an allowance, but this doesn't solve anything. Finally Mama gets the brilliant idea to give the cubs some old check books so that they can learn to better manage their funds. This all sounds great until the book ends. As soon as the cubs get the checkbooks, their money problems immediately cease. It would have been nice for there to be a little bit more time for the cubs to learn the check process instead of the problem being instantly solved. I feel like children reading this book wouldn't get a firm grasp of the lesson this book teaches (considering that I'm not completely certain what the lesson was, I doubt kids would get it either). I don't think I read The Berenstain Bears' Trouble with Money as a child but now I wish I had. I can't help but wonder if both books cover the same topics (and which one did it better).
As a general rule, I highly recommend these books and for the most part I feel you can't go wrong with these books. However, I think you can avoid this particular book.
Happy Reading!
-Melly
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