Aw nuts...

Berenstain Bears co-creator dead

This is Stan, y'know, of Stan and Jan Berenstain?

It's a shame. People my age and even perhaps a little older were the generation that really benefitted from the gigantic explosion of the children's book industry, something that took place in the sixties. Sure a lot of classics are older than us, books by Paul McCloskey, Goodnight Moon and so forth. Even Dr. Seuss got an early start on things. But authors such as Maurice Sendak, Leo Leonni, Eric Carle, and the Berenstains helped propel the industry to a new level. (If any of these general comments are incorrect, feel free to set me straight).

What this means of course is that the authors we grew up enjoying are now really old and might soon start dropping like flies(whereas Dr. Seuss died fourteen years ago and Richard Scarry died eleven years ago.) Maybe I should start a children's lit deadpool.

I will admit here that I never really liked the Berenstain Bears. Although I don't remember what books I liked when I was the age the Berenstain books are mostly aimed at, by the time I remember seeing them, I thought they were odd and somehow unpleasant. And the fact that the bears all had such big, human-looking feet and sharp claws kinda creeped me out.

~A