Customer Reviews

Another Celebrated Dancing Bear

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book, suggested in the Five in a Row curriculum, is a very sweet story about two bears who share friendship, encouragement, tea, and a love for dancing. Set in Russia, with a samovar and all, one bear encourages and helps his friend follow his dream. While Boris could choose to be jealous of Max's dancing and feel sorry for himself that he could never learn or succeed, he instead takes a leap of faith and allows Max to mentor him. A great book when learning about Russia...read over a cup of tea (Russian if you can) and Russian tea cookies and follow with a recording or DVD of Tchaikovsky.

We are using this book as part of the Five In A Row curriculum. It was the first book that didn't connect in any way with my kids (7 & 6). The pictures bored them and the story, while very nice, just didn't hold their interest. Everything in the book is basically the same color and looked drab, even to me. It was the first book we didn't like and will probably not pick up again.

I still give it three stars because there are some good things to learn from it and its a sweet story. But as a "living book" it fell flat, in our opinion :)

You can enjoy reading this book with your kids and then talk about what it means to help a friend and putting effort into doing something you really want to do.

I was very impressed with the quality of this book. The price was right and buying used is so much greener then buying new!