Instead of pencil markings on a wall, my yearly childhood growth can be tracked via photos of me clinging to the leg (and eventually waist) of some poor worker in a Berenstain Bear suit at the theme park near my grandparents’ house. Even if they weren’t able to physically hug the bears, most people of a certain age fondly remember the series of books created by Jan Berenstain — who died of a stroke at age 88 this February — with her husband Stan, who died in 2005. Janice Grant and Stanley Berenstain met on their first day at what is now UArts, and were married five years later. They were a successful commercial illustration team, but after having children, decided to try their hand at a simple, gentle set of books for the very young with lessons from “treat others as you’d like to be treated” to “floss” to “don’t be racist against pandas.” With the help of patron Theodore Geisel (then editor-in-chief of Random House’s children’s division, Dr. Seuss himself coined “Berenstain Bears”), the couple wrote and illustrated the first of more than 250 Berenstain Bears books in 1961. The world’s manners (and oral hygiene) are undoubtedly the better for their work.
