The story of Goldilocks and her visit to an unoccupied house of three bears has inspired a plethora of picture books, retellings, and rewritten accounts of the story. Robert Southey first recorded the folkloric story in an 1834 collection. (See Wikipedia for a rundown of the story’s history and reincarnations).

My three-and-a-half-year-old son loves the Three Bears story. In his honor and for the Once Upon A Time challenge, I decided to search out some of the best three bears stories to share with you. Below is a listing of some of the other, less memorable ones. My favorite versions all have their own post under the tag Goldilocks retellings.

I feel the need to mention these options here. This is not the exhaustive list. I have a few more favorites to mention tomorrow.

• Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Valeri Gorbachev (North-South Books 2001). Traditional story. Bears had strange fur, so I didn’t really like it. I know I must have missed something: an Amazon review mentioned the “whimsy” of the Gorbachev retelling.
• The Three Bears by Paul Galdone (Clarion Books, 1972). Traditional story. Galdone has published a series of fairy tales. This one of the Goldilocks story has a truly scary-ugly looking Goldilocks, though. Not my favorite rendition, and not Galdone at his best.
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Amanda Askew, illustrated by Bruno Merz (QEB Publishing, 2010). Traditional story. I really like the soft illustrations, but nothing made it stand out compared to the myriad of other choices.
• The Three Bears by Margaret Hillert, illustrated by Irma Wild (Norwood House Press, 2006). A standard story, but told in an awkward Beginning-to-Read/First Reader format (45 words in the book). For a read-aloud, it was awkward and ugly. For a beginning reader? It may work, but the illustrations are nothing special. It serves its purpose.
• The Three Bears by Gina Ingoglia, illustrated by John Nez (Golden Books, 1990). Another traditional story told in awkward format due to being an “easy to read” first reader book. Pictures are more cartoonish than the Hillert book (see above), but it still is rather unattractive. Again, it may serve is purpose for a beginning reader.
• The Three Bears by Robert Southey, illustrated by Norman Messenger (DK Publishing, 1998). Traditional story. The illustrations are very nice; they are soft and detailed. But there are not enough; they sink into the large print text. Again, although nice enough, the book doesn’t stand out among all the others.
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears: A Split-Page Surprise Book by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Laura Rader (Tambourine Books, 1995). A traditional story. The pages are split in half, so one can turn first the top half and then the bottom half. Fun for little fingers, but too much text compared to each illustration, so not as fun as it cold be.
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Jim Aylesworth, illustrated by Barbara McClintock (Scholastic, 2003). I love Aylesworth and McClintock’s collaboration on The Gingerbread Man, but I didn’t like this one at all. The story had too much text on each page, and the illustrations were unattractive. Aylesworth added a distinct flavor to the story, but it felt forced and didactic. Unfortunately, this was not a favorite.

 Again, my favorite versions all have their own post under the tag Goldilocks retellings.