The Berenstain Bears are hosting a giveaway. Ten winners will receive a Berenstain Bears Holy Bible and a Brother Bear Tote! Enter now, because the giveaway closes on Saturday morning, May 29, 9:59AM EDT!
Enter the Giveaway
Illustrated by Mike Berenstain, the Berenstain Bears Holy Bible is in the New International Reader’s Version (NIrV), written at a third-grade reading level and specifically designed to help early readers discover the Bible for themselves.
Each winner will receive a Brother Bear Tote and the Berenstain Bears Holy Bible |
The features of The Berenstain Bears Holy Bible include:
- Book introductions that provide each book’s main themes, plus an outline of the contents
- Dictionary that defines key Bible words for quick reference
- Reading plan for 150 famous stories of the Bible
- Presentation page for personalization and gift giving
- 18 full-color pages that highlight virtues taught by God’s Word, such as respect, courage and friendship. Here’s a sample:
This giveaway reminded me of how much I loved the Berenstain Bears books when I was a kid. So after you enter the giveaway, I’d like to swap stories about lessons we learned from the Berenstain Bears books we read as children.
A Lesson I Learned from the Berenstain Bears
I was 6 when I read The Berenstain Bears and the Double Dare. If you haven’t read it, it’s a good book about dealing with bullies and peer pressure. In this story, Brother Bear falls in with a gang of cruel but charismatic bullies. They pressure Brother Bear to steal a watermelon from Farmer Ben’s patch, and while Brother Bear knows this would be wrong, he really wants to impress his new friends. Brother Bear caves, gets caught in the act, and his new “friends” run away. Fortunately, Farmer Ben has grace on the young cub and shares some wisdom about how Brother Bear can stand up for what he knows is right.
I thought I was taking this lesson to heart, but I was mistaken. I closed the book still thinking the bullies were really cool. I remember thinking, “Maybe if I just don’t bully other people then I can still do bad things and everything will be okay.” This sounded reasonable to me, so I created a new “cool guy costume” (complete with black fingerless gloves, which I made myself) and I went out looking for trouble. I did the baddest thing my six-year-old imagination could think of: I stripped some branches off of a tree.
Within minutes I began to cry. I remember thinking, “Farmer Ben was right!” I learned that day that being bad, even in secret, is not cool.
How about you, did you learn any lessons from the Berenstain Bears books?
(-Adam Forrest, Zondervan Internet Team)
