The three bears

In a cabin in the woods there lived three bears. One day, the bears went out for a walk before having breakfast; and Goldilocks found the house empty…

Three Bears is an anonymous folk story popularized by the British poet Robert Southey, who in 1837 published and made the tale known to a whole generation of readers in his country. In Southey’s version, as in Eleanor Mure’s, published six years earlier, the unwelcome intruder was a grumpy old woman. In 1849 Joseph Cundall published his Treasury of pleasure books for young children with a note, in which he explained the reasons for replacing the old intruder with a girl.

Starting from the traditional tale, and without departing from the final idea that privacy must be respected, OQO editora’s Three bears version builds a link between narrator and reader in order to favor an identification between child and bears that helps the story’s formative efficacy. In addition, with the excuse of explaining the actions of the characters, the narrator adds, in a confidential tone, a series of comments on habits, virtues and good manners that affect values such as responsibility, autonomy and the good use of freedom. Apart from influencing behavioral and emotional development, and stimulating literary and artistic sensibility, this album has even more pedagogical applications, since it is an ideal instrument for transmitting mathematical concepts, understanding notions of size (large, medium or small), or establishing connections between animals and the environment to which they relate.

In this sense, Minako Chiba’s images play an important role in fostering the development of visual skills that help early readers understand both numbers and mathematical concepts. For all these reasons, Three Bears actively involves the young reader, who contrasts his own convictions with those of the book, and in this way deepens his knowledge of himself and the world around him.

Text by Marisa Núñez, from traditional tale Illustrations by Minako Chiba