They met in the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts in 1941 and jointly went off to help with the WWII war effort. Stan and Jan Berenstain worked as an artistic team from the time they were first married to the time of Stan’s death. Did Stan and Jan Berenstain set out to communicate this message? The story ends with Mama Bear calming everyone down and explaining what needs to be done to correct the behavior and/or situationīerenstain Bears offer a nice depiction of female authority in the family dynamic in that Mama Bear is the voice of wisdom and Sister Bear is on the same maturity level as her older brother.When he does try to be a disciplinarian he always loses his shit and starts yelling The cubs are usually grappling with the same developmental issues even though Sister is younger than Brother.Mama Bear enforces rules of behavior on the cubs.I would purposely make my room as messy as possible to look as fun as the cubs’, and I’d never even heard of the Gimmies or how to throw a proper tantrum until the cubs taught me.Īs an adult rereading these books to my kid, I’m noticing some plot points held constant through the series:
The pages where the cubs act up are bright and detailed, while scenes depicting well-behaved cubs are tidy, orderly, and boring. It was a heavily moralized series but most of the message was lost on me. I loved to leaf through the Berenstain Bear’s long before I could even read them. There were big trees to climb, wildflowers sprouting in every nook and cranny, a stream that ran alongside the road, and so on. The illustrations were how our house seemed to me when I was four. The stories may be past their glory days but there are no other books with the same look or feel. Those bears live the life I wish I had (treehouses and honeycomb, anyone?). The Berenstain Bear books bring up all sorts of warm memories.
0 kommentar(er)
