The Berenstain Bears in the Dark
Reviewed by Jason Levine
Published by Living Books/Stan and Jan Berenstein

Age Group: Age 2 to 5, Age 4 to 8 Type: Teaching Tools Price: $29.95 US

Description:

The mystery book that Brother Bear has checked out of the library is just a little too spooky for Sister Bear's active imagination. Now she's finding that ordinary nighttime sounds and shadows have become mysterious and frightening. After a sleepless night in the Bear family tree house, Father Bear takes Sister Bear in hand and explains how the imagination works. The lesson allows Sister Bear to control her imagination and enjoy the finish of Brother Bear's book. Now while Sister Bear sleeps soundly, it's Brother Bear's turn to lie awake wonder what those strange sounds are!

A Full Package

The Berenstain Bears in the Dark is Living Books second in the Berenstain Bears series. Like all Living Books interactive storybooks it offers quite a bit in addition to the story itself. Kids can choose to have the story read to them from beginning to end without interaction, or they can jump into the "play along" version either from the beginning or from any page in the story. Living Books claims that every page in the interactive version contains more than 20 hot spot "clickables." While we didn't put that claim to the test, my 4-year-old did confirm that the hot sport animations are well done and amusing.

The program also contains two games in addition to the story. One of the games, unfortunately, is the kind of concentration/match game that's already been done in about a thousand other kids' programs. In this one the idea is to help Sister Bear put the noisy animals to sleep by shining her flashlight on matching pairs of critters. Although this particular match game is very well executed, a fresher idea would have been more welcome.

The second game is much better. It's a sliding picture jumble puzzle, in which the kid moves the puzzle parts around by dragging them with the mouse. The puzzles feature the Bears in various indoor and outdoor scenes. A neat feature of the puzzle is that the kid can switch the scenes from day to night by clicking on a light switch on the picture frame. Both games contain 3 difficulty levels, which should help maintain interest among the older kids.

As in other Living Books programs, a soft-cover copy of the book is included in the package. When using the program to build reading skills, parents of younger children should be aware that there are slight variations in the text between the printed version and the program.

Also like other Living Books interactive stories, the program's graphics are identical to the printed books. I've always found Stan and Jan Berenstain's illustrations to be no more than serviceable, so it's not a knock on Living Books that the graphics are no better than that in their version. The original bluegrass soundtrack, on the other hand, is very good indeed.

The Technical Stuff

The Berenstain Bears in the Dark provides a "zero meg" installation, copying only the executables necessary to start the program to the hard drive and playing entirely from the CD drive. It can be uninstalled from the Windows 95 control panel. The programs runs in 256 colors mode only, so many Windows 95 users will have to adjust their display settings, an annoyance. Although The Berenstain Bears in the Dark lists for $ 29.95 U.S., it's currently being sold in stores in a bundle with The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight for about $ 38 U.S., a very good value

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