The Berenstain Bears Keep the Faith

The Berenstain Bears Keep the Faith written by Mike Berenstain is based on the series created by Jan and Stan Berenstain in 1962.  Countless children have grown up reading these stories. The original series centered around themes important to children such as too much television, a new baby, working moms and bullies.  Difficult topics were approached in story format making these books very popular for parents and kids alike.  The series lives on with newly introduced books by Mike Berenstain. In contrast to the secular nature of the original stories, this series has been reinvented to approach topics of faith and religion.  For those parents who feel strongly about faith they will appreciate this revamped series has been adapted to topics of faith in order to teach children about biblical concepts.  Secular and non religious families will most likely pass on these stories. In particular, Keep the Faith, goes beyond a moral story and inspires real and concrete faith in children.  These beloved characters bring life to the idea of faith in real terms that young readers will understand.


The hallmark characters, Sister and Brother, Mama and Papa who live in Bear Country address questions about God and the bible. This book, as well as the series in general,  is a wonderful outreach opportunity to share the gospel message with young children.  Parents who themselves grew up with this series will enjoy reading this story to their kids.  My eight year old who also enjoys the series eagerly sat and listened to this story with its familiar characters and illustrations.  In simple terms this book handled a common but difficult question that kids often have about faith and the bible and how it relates to science.  This book reconciles what the world says with faith and God.  This book is simple yet the explanation is very complete.  If you feel it is important to reinforce faith and beliefs in your child's every day life- this is the perfect book.  For those families where God, faith and religion has no place, then such readers will most likely find offense with the fact that this series has been transformed into a Christian based series.  As a blogger for Thomas Nelson's Book Look Bloggers I receved this book published by ZonderKids for the purpose of writing this review.