【贝贝熊系列之三】Messy Room

贝贝熊学英语系列 - Messy Room

[前言] The Berenstain Bears – Stories are set in Bear Country, a society composed entirely of bears. Story lines typically follow the Bear family as they deal with topics relevant to both children and parents. It is a series of excellent books to learn child education and parenting skills. Lilac09 rewrites these stories for English studying.

When small bears forget to pick up, store and stash,
some of their favorite things end up in the trash.

From the outside, the Bear’s tree house looked very neat and well kept.
The flowerbeds sparkled with flowers.
The woodwork was freshly painted and in good repair.
The grass was cut and the vegetable patch was weeded.

The inside of the hours was neat and clean too.
The pictures were straight.
The piano was dusted.
The kitchen was spick-and-span ( 崭新的 )

Yes, the Bear’s house was a lesson in neatness and cleanliness.
Except for one place, the Brother and Sister’s room.
It was a great mess – a dust-catching, wall-to-wall, helter-skelter (匆促忙乱地(的)，慌慌张张的 disorderly) mess!

A half-done puzzle gathered dust in one corner of the room.
A few of Brother’s dinosaur models collected cobwebs in another.
Sister’s stuffed animals were strewn ([stru:n]) everywhere.

It wasn’t that Brother and Sister were naturally messy. The trouble was that when clean-up time came, they spent more time arguing than cleaning – arguing about clean-up chores instead of sharing the job and working as a team.

Not much could be done, so Mama had to take the broom and did the sweeping herself…and she often did the picking up too and the putting away.

One day, the mess had really been built up and Mama was so fed up with it that she lost her temper. She stormed into the room with a big box. She threatened to throw away all the junk in the Brother and Sister’s room. ”They’re not junk”, protested Brother and Sister. All the yelling and screaming reached Papa. He hurried up stairs and looked into the messy and noisy room. It didn’t take a deep thinker to figure out what was going on.

Then Papa got an idea. They could have a lot of different kinds of boxes – large boxes for large toys, small boxes for collections and models to get all the things well organized. Sister suggested a large pegboard ( 木栓板 ) with holes and pegs to hang things on. Papa thought that was a great idea.

Cubs and Mama sorted out toys, books, games and puzzles and put them into boxes. Each box was clearly labeled and put away neatly into their closet.

It was a big job cleaning up all the messy build-up, but it was so worthwhile, a nice, neat, well-organized room to live in.

Mama even set up a few rules about sweeping and less arguing for the Brother and Sister to follow. Hope they could keep it up. After all, no one wants to live in a pigsty.

pegboard