Born: 1923 September 29 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Died: 2005 November 26 in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania, United States
Biography: Stan and Jan Berenstain were American writers and illustrators best known for creating the children's book series The Berenstain Bears.
They met on their first day of art school at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art in 1941. During WWII, Stan served as a military medical illustrator while Jan was a draft artist for the Army Corps of Engineers in addition to working in an aircraft factory. Jan fashioned a pair of wedding rings from spare aluminum collected at the latter job, and the two married on April 17, 1946.
The Berenstains were successful cartoonists with several adult humor books and magazine credits to their names before their first Berenstain Bears book.
They produced together the magazine cartoon feature It's All in the Family from 1956 to 1989 in McCall's and Good Housekeeping. Inspired by their children's enthusiasm for Dr. Seuss books, the Berenstains decided to attempt a series with animal protagonists themselves, settling on bears not because of their surname as was commonly believed, but because they found them easy to draw. They published their first book featuring the Berenstain Bears, The Big Honey Hunt, in 1962.