Mike Berenstain
Stan and Jan Berenstain started creating art together when they met in Miss Sweeny’s drawing class on their first day at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art in 1941. Their budding romance was interrupted by World War II, Stan serving in the Army as a medical illustrator and Jan working as an aircraft riveter for the duration. When, after the war, they married, they started a family and also began a joint career as magazine cartoonists.
Raising two sons who liked books, especially books by Dr. Seuss, led Stan and Jan to submit a children’s book to Dr. Seuss himself, who had become an editor and publisher at Random House. Their first children’s book, The Big Honey Hunt, appeared in 1962. It introduced the Bear family “who lived down a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country.” Stan and Jan went on to create a number of books in Dr. Seuss’s Beginner Books line.
Stan and Jan started their own line of books about everyday family experiences in 1974 with The Berenstain Bears’ New Baby. This immensely successful series now includes more than 60 titles with new subjects being added each year.
Younger son, Mike, who has become a successful writer/illustrator of children’s books on his own, joined his parents in Berenstain Bear Country in the late 1980s, working with them as a team creating new Berenstain Bears books.
There are well over 200 Berenstain Bears titles in total, with over 200 million copies in print. They are published all over the world. The latest foreign edition is a group of titles published in Egypt in Arabic translation – a million copies were printed!
The Berenstain Bears TV show on PBS runs throughout the U.S. and in many other countries as well.
Stan and Jan were always interested in theater, especially musicals. Their children’s musical, The Berenstain Bears On Stage, opened at the Rose Theater in Omaha, and is now touring the country.
The Berenstain Bears are also featured in many children’s museum exhibits around the country, including a permanent Berenstain Bear Country exhibit under construction at the Strong Museum in Rochester, New York. The characters have been successfully marketed for dolls, toys, games, gifts, food and clothing.
Stan passed away in November 2005 at the age of 82. Jan and Mike continue to write and illustrate Berenstain Bears books in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a beautiful region that looks for all the world like Berenstain Bear Country.
The Berenstain Bears Out West
Currently Touring
- 2.25.10 - 4.2.10 : NCCIL