Jan Berenstain Mike Berenstain Popular Books

Jan Berenstain Mike Berenstain Biography & Facts

The Berenstain Bears is a children's literature franchise created by the late Stan and Jan Berenstain and continued by their son, Mike Berenstain, who assumed partial authorship in 2002, and full authorship in 2012 following his mother's passing. The books feature a family of anthropomorphic grizzly bears who generally learn a moral or safety-related lesson in the course of each story. Since the 1962 debut of the first Berenstain Bears book, The Big Honey Hunt, the series has grown to over 400 titles, which have sold approximately 260 million copies in 23 languages. The Berenstain Bears franchise has also expanded well beyond the books, encompassing television series and a wide variety of other products and licenses. While enjoying decades of popularity and receiving numerous awards, the series has been criticized for its perceived saccharine tone and formulaic storytelling. History Stanley Berenstain and Janice Grant met in 1941, on their first day of drawing class at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, where they formed an immediate bond. After being separated during World War II, during which Stan served in the Army as a medical illustrator and Janice worked as a drafter for the United States Army Corps of Engineers and an aircraft riveter, they were reunited and married in 1946. While initially working as art teachers, the Berenstains pursued a joint career in cartooning and gradually found success working together on illustrations, humorous sketches and cover art for publications including The Saturday Review of Literature, Collier's, McCall's, Good Housekeeping, and The Saturday Evening Post. In 1951, they published Berenstains' Baby Book, a humorous how-to aimed at adults and based on their experiences raising their infant son Leo in downtown Philadelphia. Nearly two dozen other books followed; described by Stan as "cartoon essays", the titles included Marital Blitz, How To Teach Your Children About Sex Without Making A Complete Fool of Yourself, and Have A Baby, My Wife Just Had A Cigar! In the early 1960s, the Berenstains sought to enter the field of writing for young children. For their first children's book, they chose to cast bears as the main characters, primarily because "bears are furry and appealing." Stan also observed that female bears are "terrifyingly good mothers" while the males are "lousy fathers". (The Berenstains did not consider the similarity to their last name in making the choice) In their 2002 memoir, they said that they knew from the start that their book would "have three characters: a bluff, overenthusiastic Papa Bear who wore bib overalls and a plaid shirt and ...a wise Mama Bear who wore a blue dress with white polka dots ... and a bright, lively little cub." The Berenstains' first bear story, titled Freddy Bear's Spanking, arrived on the desk of Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, who had found phenomenal success in 1957 with The Cat in the Hat and was now editor of a Random House series called "Beginner Books". Geisel took on the manuscript, but spent the next two years ruthlessly challenging the Berenstains to make improvements to the writing and structure and to connect with their characters on a deeper level. He asked questions such as "What kind of pipe tobacco does Papa Bear smoke?" and urged them to analyze the relationship between Papa Bear and Small Bear, to which Stan responded, mystified, "Well, he's the father, and he's the son"; however, Jan attributed the inspiration for the characters' dynamic to the 1931 film The Champ. The book was finally published in 1962 under the title The Big Honey Hunt, with no plans to revisit the bears in a sequel. Geisel had told the Berenstains to feature a different animal in their next story, as "there are already too many bears ... Sendak's got some kind of bear. There's Yogi Bear, the Three Bears, Smokey Bear, the Chicago Bears ... for your next book you should do something as different from bears as possible." They had started work on a new project featuring a penguin when Geisel called and told them: "We're selling the hell out of the bear book." The second bear book, The Bike Lesson, appeared in 1964, featuring the names Stan and Jan Berenstain instead of Stanley and Janice; Geisel had changed the credit without consulting them. Geisel was also responsible for adding the name "Berenstain Bears" to the covers of the book. Over the next several decades, Stan and Jan collaborated on hundreds of books from their home studio outside Philadelphia. After developing a storyline together, one of them (usually Stan) would develop a first draft, which the other would then refine into an 1100-word manuscript. They also worked together on the illustrations. In 2002, the couple released a memoir of their career titled Down A Sunny Dirt Road. Their sons Leo and Mike also entered the family business. Mike became a published author and illustrator starting in 1976, and Leo published a book of short stories in 1992. In the 1990s, the men worked on the Berenstain Bears "Big Chapter Book" series (published under the names Stan and Jan Berenstain). Following Stan's death from lymphoma in 2005, Mike collaborated with his mother on writing and illustrating Berenstain Bears installments, while Leo has been involved with the business side of the franchise. Jan Berenstain died in February 2012 following a stroke. Mike Berenstain continues to write and illustrate new books in the series and has incorporated faith-based themes in recent years. Characters and themes The Berenstain Bears, who reside "in a big treehouse down a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country", consists of Papa Bear, an over-eager, bumbling carpenter; wise Mama Bear, a housewife and perfectionist; and their children, Brother Bear (originally Small Bear), and later additions Sister Bear and Honey Bear. Sister Bear was introduced in the 1974 book The Berenstain Bears' New Baby. Honey Bear's imminent arrival was announced in early 2000 in The Birds, the Bees, and the Berenstain Bears, along with a reader contest to name the new bear; her birth was featured later that year in The Berenstain Bears and Baby Makes Five. The early Beginner Books about the bears generally follow a basic formula, so described by the Berenstains: "Papa sets out to instruct Small Bear in some aspect of the art of living and ends up badly the worse for wear, with Small Bear expressing his appreciation for the fine lesson Papa has taught him." According to The Washington Post's Paul Farhi, "The action usually starts when the kids face a problem. They turn to Papa, who offers a "solution" that only makes the problem—or the kids' fears about it—even worse. Enter Mama, who eventually sets everyone straight." The litany of issues confronted by the Berenstain Bears over their fifty years of publication includes bullying, messiness, poor sportsmanship, visiting the dentist, online safety, and childhood obesity, among countless others. The Berensta.... Discover the Jan Berenstain Mike Berenstain popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jan Berenstain Mike Berenstain books.