A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond

I read this with Dane and I think he liked it more than I did. Paddington is a bear found at Paddington Station in London, and the Brown family takes him home and lets him stay with them. He gets into all sorts of scrapes and makes all sorts of messes but they love him so much they let him stay. (I'm not sure I understand that--I would definitely not have wanted him to stay at my house considering all the work he caused.) It was a cute story with some really cute episodes in it, like when Paddington goes backstage at a play because he thinks the villain really is bad and he needs to save the girl, or when he smashes the next-door neighbor's watch while trying to do a magic trick. (That one made me laugh out loud.) The only tricky thing for me with my audience was that the story was set in the 1950s, maybe? Not sure what time period--but it was long enough ago that I had to explain a whole lot of things to Dane, like why the photographer was going underneath a black cloth or what opera glasses are at a play. I wasn't sure if he was understanding everything even when I was explaining these things, but he still seemed to really enjoy it and was super excited about reading it every time we did. I didn't love it though and didn't really rush to read it so it still took us a while to get through.