Goldilocks and the Three Bears: A Tale Moderne

This companion to Guarnaccia's The Three Little Pigs: An Architectural Tale recasts the three bears as hipsters living in a cottage filled with 20th-century design icons. Papa Bear's chair is a Charles Rennie Mackintosh ladderback ("hard as a rock"), Mama Bear's is an Arne Jacobsen "Egg" chair ("way too soft"), and Baby Bear's is an Eames brothers creation ("but just as she was getting cozy, the chair broke into pieces"). (These and other furnishings appear and are defined on the endpapers.) Goldilocks finds chili on the table instead of porridge, airbeds and Italian sofas instead of woodland cottage primitive, while Papa Bear sports a beret, sunglasses, and a clarinet in the hippest '50s beat style (Baby Bear, meanwhile, is never without his coonskin cap). Guarnaccia's clear-line drawings convey a gently humorous vision of mid-century life among kidney-shaped furniture and Hungarian ceramics; there's a cowboy holster slung around Baby Bear's bed and an "Ursus" university pennant hanging on his wall. Children will be entertained (and, possibly, educated), design students will be amused, and adults will draw sighs of nostalgia. Ages 4–8. (Nov.)