Franklin Has A Sleepover, by Paulette Bourgeois (our review)

I'm not a big fond of branding, and that's really what I think character attachment amounts to. I shudder a little inside every time I pass the Diego branded sandwich bags or Dora crayons. What's wrong with Crayola? What's wrong with having your own personal identity? Eek. Ever since we broke out the Old School Sesame Street DVDs we've had to curb a little of this, but since it's not an everyday ocurrence in our house he's been pretty uninterested in the Elmo crap, and is mostly interested in pointed out Bert and Ernie or Big Bird for identifying purposes, not for purchasing.

So what, you might ask, are we doing with a Franklin book? I'm not sure how we ended up with the first Franklin book in our collection, but Calvin really enjoyed the story (I'm not even entirely sure at this point which one it was) and I actually had no qualms about it either—most of those books do more towards teaching kids how not to behave than serving as material for role models (I'm pointing at you, Berentstain Bears!), but most (not all) of the Franklin books seem to skip the old recipe of "show bad behavior first, followed sometimes by consequences and then by corrections" and instead model teaching behavior simply by modeling it, not by showing wrong first. This is definitely not true of all the Franklin books (the New Friend book, for instance, or the one where he fights with his sister before learning to get along with her), but whenever I am looking for books the first thing I do is check for the "bad behavior first" formula, and if I find it the book goes right back on the shelf. (Read Nurture Shock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman for more about that). Another definite plus to Franklin is that he isn't everywhere you look. I think he has or had a TV show at one time, and most of the cruddy books are from that later era, but he's still a relatively unknown and unsold character. I have no real argument with Franklin.

It's a good thing, too, because Calvin really likes those books. I think he likes that they are all animals. In any case, the book he chose to review this week is Franklin Has a Sleepover, which, by the way, is the story of Franklin inviting his friend bear over for their very first sleepover, and you know what? There's no hitch; nobody sneaks out late, nobody stays up late, nobody is mean, nobody fights. Bear comes over, they have a great time, at one point he is feeling a little homesick and Franklin makes him more comfortable, but this is just one page of many and has no real bearing on the story. Ha, I said bearing and it's about a bear.

Here's what Calvin had to say"

"[The book] is about Franklin and Bear. Franklin cleans up his room and Bear packs his stuff. They set up their tent in the living room and Bear packs games and a sleeping bag. They go to sleep, but bear doesn't feel well. He misses his room so they go tot Franklin's room and sleep there. They have a special breakfast."

"[My favorite part is] where they sit around the fire and have drinsk and roast marshmallows adn hot dogs around the fire."

[Would you recommend this book to others?] "Yes but I would not want them to take ours, but they can get one from the store or the library."