Synopses & Reviews
Once upon a time, in Mrs. Sweeneys first year drawing class at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, a "lantern-jawed exotic" named Stan admired the drawing of a brown-haired, blue-eyed girl named Janice...and it was kismet! It also heralded the birth of one of the great collaborations in all of childrens literature: Stan and Jan Berenstain, creators of the Berenstain Bears.
This enormously readable account tells of the early years before they met, their courtship (briefly interrupted by World War II), married life, and their first fateful meeting with Theodor Seuss Geisel the editor-in-chief and president of Beginner Books.
It was this fateful meeting that led to the publication of The Big Honey Hunt the book that launched their careers as childrens book artists and introduced to the world what would quickly become Americas first family of bears: the Berenstain Bears.
Review
"[T]heir voices are as lively and quick as one might hope....The book is profusely illustrated with work from all phases of their careers, culminating in their own favorite images from titles across the decades." Booklist
Review
"The authors effectively mix narrative cartoons, photographs and their early schoolwork." The New York Times
About the Author
Stan and Jan Berenstain were both born in 1923 in Philadelphia. They didn't know each other as children, but met later at school, at the Philadelphia College of Art. They liked each other right away, and found out that the both enjoyed the same kinds of books, plays, music and art. During World War II, Stan was a medical assistant in the Army, and Jan worked in an airplane factory. When the war was over, they got married and began to work together as artists and writers, primarily drawing cartoons for popular magazines.