When Mama reads an article about converting an attic into a family room in Tree Housekeeping magazine, the family decides to have a yard sale to clear out their attic. However, each item in the attic is important to them, from Mama's old trumpet, to the cracked honey pot that was a wedding gift, to Papa's baseball card collection. It turns out that the attic was already a great family room--it just needed a little cleaning.
The Berenstain Bears and the Attic Treasure by Stan & Jan Berenstain portrays the Bear family reminiscing about some of their forgotten possessions. The moral, if there is one, is that our old things, and particularly the memories they evoke, are important to us.
The art is nice, even if the bears occasionally have very odd expressions--that's par for the course in the modern Berenstain Bears books, though. It fun to see Mama and Papa's wedding photos, and it's amusing to see Sister "twirl-a-hooping up a storm" after Brother fails to twirl at all. Incidentally, I guess that, like Game Bear this is an attempt to avoid trademarks. Unlike Game Bear, though, which was amusing, twirl-a-hoop is just weird-sounding. Berenstains, think of more creative names, if you're not going to say hula hoop.
My copy of this book was published as part of a promotion with McDonald's, along with three others: The Berenstain Bears' Life with Papa, The Berenstain Bears and the Substitute Teacher, and The Berenstain Bears and the Eager Beavers. I don't have any of those three, as far as I can remember, so I can't say whether there's any common theme. However, The Berenstain Bears' Life with Papa definitely sounds amusing to me. I'll have to try to pick up a copy, some time.
The Berenstain Bears and the Attic Treasure is a pretty good Berenstain Bears book. Not much story nor much of a lesson, but it's still fun, with amusing art, and it isn't hampered by the sort of mean-spiritedness I noted in some of the others. Unfortunately, this one seems to be out of print, so you'll have to pick up a used copy, if you want to read it for yourself.