The title of this picture book wouldn't tell you, but perhaps the cover illustration - of three bears - might. Namely, that this is a version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. What the title does intimate, though, is that this particular story has two sides - and "me" and a "you" side - a baby-bear perspective and a Goldilocks perspective, perspectives that are beautifully executed by the clever Anthony Browne.
This retelling of a familiar tale will particularly appeal to those of us who have always wondered how and why Goldilocks ended up in the house of the three bears, and where she might have ended up after fleeing the house that she had, more or less, rent asunder.
Goldilocks' tale is a gritty, wordless "film" running parallel to the baby bear's story, on the left-hand pages of the book. The identifying orange (not gold, interestingly) of Goldilocks' hair is the only shot of colour in the otherwise sepia-hued frames of a story in which Goldilocks and her mother are seen shopping together. Goldilocks sees a floating balloon and, leaving her mother, follows the balloon even as it evades her grasp and disappears into the dusky night.
Lost in a maze of inner-city passageways, she eventually finds a seemingly safe haven in the house of the three bears, where events play out exactly as we have come to know they would. In this version, however, in the aftermath of her encounter with the bears, we watch Goldilocks searching among the graffiti-clad streets for her mother, and are almost as relieved as Goldilocks when she and her mother are reunited in an embrace as big and as warm as any bear hug on a final double-page spread.
Contrast this scenario with the baby bear's side of the story as it plays out opposite Goldilocks' tale, on the right-side pages of the book, a fairy tale as light and droll as Goldilocks' is dark and contemporary. In bright pastels, baby bear's perspective of the tale unfolds exactly as we know it will, but in this case, it ends with baby bear's question: "I wonder what happened to her?" Perhaps baby bear will never know, but we certainly will and do.