He also threatens to abandon her, which is more distressing to Edith than the corporal punishment (hmm… father and brother abandoning little girl… sounds familiar, right?). Bear grimly puts up with it until Edith one day plays dress-up with her never-seen, never-mentioned owner’s makeup and gowns without permission, so he puts her over his knee and spanks her bottom. Like most kids, they get into all sorts of mischief. Bear becomes a father figure his presumed son Little Bear becomes her brother and best friend. To sum up the first book, which was published in 1957 and introduces the characters-and the controversy surrounding them-Edith is a despairing doll living alone in a grand NYC mansion until one day two stuffed bears inexplicably arrive on the scene. There are ten books in the Lonely Doll series, three of which were reissued in the late 1990s by Houghton Mifflin (including the first) but I’m writing up The Lonely Doll Learns a Lesson because I scored the first edition at a library sale a few years ago. She is either affectionate, with a sort of kitten - like, tantalizing playfulness, or she is a revengeful Juno, with eyes of anger and words of sharp.
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