PHILADELPHIA – Stan Berenstain, who with his wife wrote and illustrated the Berenstain Bear books that helped millions of children cope with trips to the dentist, the first day of school and new siblings, has died.
Berenstain, 82, died Saturday in suburban Philadelphia from complications of cancer, said Kate Jackson of HarperCollins Children’s Books in New York.
In more than 200 books over 40 years, the couple helped set the standard for children’s literature.
“Everybody feels like it was the end of an era,” said Jackson, one of Berenstain’s editors, adding that the publisher plans to continue the series. “The things that they wrote about very much came from their family experience and their heart.”
The series showed children – and parents – how to deal with a long list of childhood challenges, from watching less TV to not succumbing to the “in-crowd.” In the 1980s, the bear family moved on to lessons about the environment and teenage drug use.
“I think he just wanted a society in which people understood each other, were helpful to each other and so on,” said James Farley, a friend of the Berenstains who co-owns Farley’s Book Shop in New Hope.
The first Berenstain Bears book, “The Big Honey Hunt,” was published in 1962. The couple developed the series with children’s author Theodor Geisel – better known as Dr. Seuss, then head of children’s publishing at Random House – with the goal of teaching children to read while entertaining them.
The series eventually expanded to include television specials, a Web site, DVDs and a Christmas musical. Despite changes in society in the last four decades, much stayed the same in “Bears Country.”
“Kids still tell fibs and they mess up their rooms and they still throw tantrums in the supermarket,” Stan Berenstain said in 2002. “Nobody gets shot. No violence. There are problems, but they’re the kind of typical family problems everyone goes through.”
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