ALA Booklist

With lots of wordplay and wry, lively pictures, this fractured fairy tale is also a hilarious sequel to the Goldilocks story. Of course, the parody is for older readers, but even young preschoolers will get some of the twists and turns on the story they know, and they will love the mayhem caused by a big, klutzy creature. A bear gets lost in the city, and, disoriented by the bright lights and terrible racket, he takes shelter in an apartment in Snooty Towers. No one is home. He tries the food: too soggy, too crunchy. He wants porridge, but he settles for a toast sandwich. When he tries to rest, he ends up sitting on the cat and then bursting the beanbag chair. Then the family returns and finds the mess. The little one screams, "Somebody has been eating my toast and they've eaten it all up!" The bear thinks the mommy person looks familiar. It turns out it's Goldilocks, living happily ever after. The playful, mixed-media art in colored pencil, paint, and collage extends the wordplay fun with the scenes of the bear lost in the crowded streets and passing by the Ugly Sister Beauty Parlor, Coffee Beanstalk, and Little Piggy Bank. Great for sharing.

Horn Book (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2013)

In this retelling of Goldilocks set in a fancy high-rise, the interloper is a bear and the homeowners are humans. The writing strains for originality ("All that whooshy traveling was certainly a hungry business"), but there are good visual gags and a neat surprise: the bear ultimately realizes that the stylish mom is actually the original Goldilocks all grown up.

Kirkus Reviews

A sequel to the traditional fairy tale finds a bear lost in a big city. Overwhelmed by the noise and lights, the bear ducks into Snooty Towers apartments to escape and get some much-needed rest. Some porridge would hit the spot. But one bowl is too soggy (fishbowl water--with fish!), one too crunchy (cat food) and the last is dry but doable (buttered toast). The mishaps continue in his search for a chair and a bed (a cactus and bath tub are involved, and the cat continues to be abused). The return of the penthouse-dwelling family wakes him, and he listens to their complaints as they follow his trail through the apartment to the little person's bed where he is resting. The mommy person and the bear recognize each other and catch up over porridge before the now-grown Baby Bear finds his way back to the woods. Hodgkinson's mixed-media artwork is the real star. The retro illustrations are done in bold blues, lime greens and pinks and are full of patterns and wonderfully scratchy and marbled textures. The blond family's clothing, hairdos and attitudes neatly match their penthouse home, and the text plays into the artwork; "bright lights" is surrounded by lines depicting shine, while "wobbly" is written in a suitably shaky style. Cute, but readers may wonder how a bear who grew up in the cottage that Goldilocks visited could have not a "crumb-of-a-clue" about porridge, chairs and beds. (Fractured fairy tale. 3-8)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Who doesn't love a reunion show? Hodgkinson (Limelight Larry) brings together a legendary couple-Baby Bear and Goldilocks-via a clever story that offers few clues as to what the author is up to. "Once upon a time, there was this bear," who wanders out of the woods and ends up in the heart of a noisy, bustling city. Disoriented, the bear stumbles into the penthouse apartment in Snooty Towers, where he finds just the right porridge, chair, and bed before falling asleep. The family is outraged, of course, until the "mommy person" and the bear realize who the other is. Hodgkinson's angular, naïf drawing style has just the right amount of satirical nudge for depicting Goldilocks' ascension to the 1% (she's become a stylish blonde matron married to an equally stylish and blonde man with a Mr. Monopoly mustache). Hodgkinson's dry sense of humor is on full display-the first chair Baby Bear tries is "too ouchy," the second "too noisy" (they are, respectively, a cactus and a cat)-and should earn this "Where are they now?" fairy tale many re-reads. Ages 3-up. (Aug.)