I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Fourth Bear. I hadn’t really enjoyed The Big Over Easy very much, although there were funny bits. I picked it up off the new book shelf because, well, that’s the sort of guy I am. Once I start reading a series, the author has to work pretty hard to get me to stop.
As it happens, this book was substantially better than the last one. I think, in part, it was simply the happy choice of fictional theft: the inability to catch the Gingerbread man, the various inhabitants of the Quangle-Wangle’s hat, and what happened to Goldilocks after she left the Three Bears’ house, and the Swiftian extraction of energy from cucumbers. Oh, and living next door to Punch and Judy; I was a little disappointed that the policeman who went to investigate the domestic violence at the Punch and Judy house didn’t meet the usual fate of such policemen, but I suppose that’s the way of things. They don’t have hanging in Nursery Crime Britain, either, so the story can’t end traditionally anyway.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.