A Bear Called Paddington

by Michael Bond | Children's Books |
ISBN: 0907486940 Global Overview for this book
Registered by Rakuna of Helsinki, Uusimaa / Nyland Finland on 5/15/2008
Buy from one of these Booksellers:
Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon DE | Amazon FR | Amazon IT | Bol.com
2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by Rakuna from Helsinki, Uusimaa / Nyland Finland on Thursday, May 15, 2008
Found from the book eschange shelf at Kamppi. The book was bit thorn from the back but I fixed it with Pelloplast.

The book includes five Paddington novels:
A Bear Called Paddington (1958)
More About Paddington (1959)
Paddington Helps Out (1960)
Paddington at Large (1962)
Paddington Marches On (1964)

More about Paddington.

I decided to organise a bookring of this book before I read it myself. This is Finland only ring.

People taking part to this ring:
Jaakko196 (Helsinki)

There is five things I recommend you to do so the ring will go on nice and smoothly:
1. Make a quick journal entry when you receive the book, so we know it has arrived nice and safely.
2. Read and send on within FIVE weeks - or make a journal entry to let us know how you're getting on if you need longer.
3. Feel free to PM the next one on the line even as early as when you get the book so you'll have the address ready when you are done with the book.
4. Make a journal entry when you've finished and ready to send the book forward.
5. Feel free to use the cheapest method of shipping / delivering available but it would be nice if you mention in the journal if you suspect it to take long time until it will arrive. That way we won't start to worry (too soon) that it has been lost in the mail. Couriers are highly recomended since the book is quite thick.

Journal Entry 2 by VariC from Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin Germany on Sunday, June 8, 2008
Got this at the Finnish summer meet. I already have the first two Paddington books in Finnish and I like them. Still have to read them in this one, since there are some differences, for instance, the family in the Finnish version is called Kent instead of Brown, presumably to ease pronunciation.

Journal Entry 3 by VariC from Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin Germany on Thursday, July 3, 2008
Paddington is kind of an odd children's book because there isn't that much child presence in it. Sure, the Browns have the two children (and I have no idea how old they are), but they're not omnipresent. The stories are a lot more often about Paddington's interaction with adults, and Paddington himself also behaves or at least tries to behave like an adult himself.

There's a very important lesson in many of the stories: people make mistakes and they're never as horrible as they feel. Paddington always tries to be helpful but also gets into problems a lot. His natural instinct is never to tell anyone but try to fix the problem himself, of course getting even deeper into trouble. But when he is eventually found out, it turns out that it wasn't that serious and can be fixed easily. And all the adults, even those he doesn't know, are always very understanding. A very useful lesson for children, I would imagine, but also for adults in their treatment of children.

The individual books in this volume are pretty consistent with each other, and I didn't think there was any decrease in quality as often happens when a series gets continued over several books. At one point it seemed that Paddington might be becoming more anarchistic, but luckily that was just a single story.

I'm not really comfortable with the treatment of Mr. Curry. He always gets the short end of the stick, and we're told he deserves it because he treats others horribly, but we see very little of this horrible treatment, so it ends up looking like this gruff neighbour is just getting shafted all the time. On the other hand, showing Curry's behaviour might not be suitable for the tone of the books, so it's not really all that bad.

Paddington is nice feel-good reading, his antics always make me smile at least. He's the best talking bear I know. And I absolutely love the illustrations by Peggy Fortnum. Paddington's face is just so adorable in them!

Journal Entry 4 by Rakuna from Helsinki, Uusimaa / Nyland Finland on Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The book returned to home. Thank you VariC!

Journal Entry 5 by Rakuna at Turku, Varsinais-Suomi / Egentliga Finland Finland on Friday, January 21, 2011
In general I do like the Paddington books. The stories are funny and mostly happy, and very good as far as children's stories go. Paddington as a character is wonderfully cute and loveable, which isn't bad either. And the stories are nice bite size, very fitting to bedtime stories.

How ever I did have a problem with this omnibus. As I was reading it as one book instead of reading five books (most likely not in a row) it gave me much too much space and time to notice the certain repetitiveness in the stories as well as the flaws in the characters. For example I soon found it rather irritating that even tough you can hear the Brown family saying they love having Paddington around, they (especially the adults) just seem to get worried and slightly displeased over his actions. Also, how come they never seem to learn to give Paddington proper instructions and explanations about the things he is supposed to do and experience when they know how he tends to make a scene when he hasn't got proper instructions and explanations.

The other thing that bucked me a lot was how Bond described mr. Curry. He is made so one dimensionally bad guy I really feel sorry for him. I really started to feel sorry for him. I really which he would have been portrayed bit more complexly. This is a general flaw in children's literature.

How ever in general I do like these stories and will probably return to them some time. I just won't read them all together, that's for sure.

Are you sure you want to delete this item? It cannot be undone.