Half of the couple that created The Berenstain Bears has died. She was 88. Her husband Stan died in 2005.

While I was never obsessive about collecting Berenstain Bears books—my little brother had every last one of them—I totally obsessed over the cutaway view of their house in The Berenstain Bears’ New Baby, which I think is still the best in the series.

4 replies on “Jan Berenstain”

  1. They definately left their mark. My wife and I are aspiring children’s book authors and the Berenstain’s are clearly a model to follow. I believe their children took over the books not too long ago.

  2. I always wondered why the bear family did not have real names, but everybody else did. And that Sister Bear was called Sister, even though she was also a daughter. Why wasn’t that her name? In relation to the parents, who presumably named her, wouldn’t Daughter have made more sense? And Brother was older, so are we just to accept that he was an only child named BROTHER for a couple of years? And what if they decided not to have more kids? Then his name would have been even weirder.

    Aside from that complete failure of literary foresight or creativity, I really loved those books. RIP Jan.

  4. Also Joneser, the new-new baby was “Honey”, when in this form, she should have been “Sister Two” or “Other Sister”. I have three kids and they ALL got names.
    Best Berenstain concept, from the book of the same name— “Too much Birthday”. It’s really influenced my parenting.

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