The Berenstain Bears are the creation of
Stan and Jan Berenstain and are the stars of a huge collection of
children's books and
videos. (
Amazon.com mentions two more books coming out in
July; right now there are 613 hits when one does a search on there.) Not having been to a children's section in a
bookstore in a while, I don't know if they're still as popular as they were when I was a
tyke learning to read (think mid-1980s), but at that time the local
public library had almost every Berenstain Bears title. (And I probably read them all at one time or another before discovering
Encyclopedia Brown...)
The basic concept:
There's a family of bears. They live in what looks like a tree with a door and windows in Bear Country. Aside from the fact that they're, well, bears that live in a tree, the Berenstein Bears aren't terribly distinguishable from humans - they walk on two feet, wear clothes, go to work or school, and, as just about every story involves, get into moral dilemmas.
Dramatis Personae:
Papa Bear - head of the household, carpenter, "often wrong but never in doubt"
Mama Bear - the wisest of the bears, president of the Bear Country Garden Club, and a champion quiltmaker
Brother Bear - the older child, big soccer (or football, as some would have it) fan, tends to get in a moderate amount of trouble
Sister Bear - the one always dressed in pink, the youngest, big into jumping rope and "Bearbie," also gets in a fair amount of trouble.
Now and then a few other recurring characters (like Cousin Fred) show up, but those are the basics. The basic plot is usually thus: one or more of the Bear family does something that isn't up to Mamma's standards (like keeping a
messy room or hanging out with only the
in-crowd). After some initial resistance to correcting such
behavior, the involved individual(s) see reason.
While I'm sure that going back, titles like "The Mad, Mad, Mad Toy Craze" and "Too Much Junkfood" might not seem as thrilling and/or funny as they once did (and probably more than a little priggish), it strikes me that much like the Curious George books, the Berenstain Bears books usually do a nice job of explaining the wherefores of appropriate social and moral behavior without resorting to religion.
The Bears' official homepage (used here for memory refreshment) is at http://www.berenstainbears.com/.