(1970) The Bears' Christmas, Stan and Jan Berenstain. (Beginner Books Series) (ISBN: 9780394800905)

Book Description: Beginner Books/Random House Books, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1970. States Grolier Book Club Edition. First Edition Thus. Number line on copyright page reads (B C D E  5 6 7 8), later 1996 Printing. Glossy Illustrated Hard Cover Boards. Pages not numered, Color Illustrations, 6.25" x 8.75" tall, .25" thick. As New copy. 

Book Condition: As New. Tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered (see scans). 

Dust Jacket Condition: None.

About This Book: A Cat in the Hat I Can Read It All By Myself Beginner Book. Large print for early readers. "Daddy Bear tries to show his son how to use the sled, skates and skis Santa brought for Christmas."

About Berenstain Bears: The Berenstain Bears is a series of children's books created by Stan and Jan Berenstain. The books feature a family of anthropomorphic bears who generally learn a moral or safety-related lesson in the course of each story. Since the 1962 debut of the first Berenstain Bears book, The Big Honey Hunt, the series has grown to over 300 titles, which have sold approximately 260 million copies in 23 languages. The Berenstain Bears franchise has also expanded well beyond the books, encompassing two television series and a wide variety of other products and licenses.

History: Stanley Berenstain and Janice Grant met in 1941 on their first day of drawing class at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, where they formed an immediate bond. After being separated during World War II, during which Stan worked for the Army as a medical illustrator and Janice worked as a riveter, they were reunited and wed in 1946. While initially working as art teachers, the Berenstains pursued a joint career in cartooning and gradually found success working together on illustrations, humorous sketches and cover art for publications including The Saturday Review of Literature, Collier's, McCall's, Good Housekeeping, and The Saturday Evening Post. In 1951, they published Berenstains' Baby Book, a humorous paperback aimed at adults and based on their experiences raising their infant son Leo in downtown Philadelphia. Nearly two dozen other books followed; described by Stan as "cartoon essays," the titles included It's All in the Family, Baby Makes Four and It's Still in the Family.

In the early 1960s, the Berenstains sought to enter the field of writing for young children.^[2] For their first children's book, they chose to cast bears as the main characters, primarily because the animal held wide appeal and could be drawn easily. Stan also observed that female bears are "terrifyingly good mothers." (The Berenstains denied that their last name had anything to do with the decision.) In their 2002 memoir, they said that they knew from the start that their book would "have three characters: a bluff, overenthusiastic Papa Bear who wore bib overalls and a plaid shirt and ... a wise Mama Bear who wore a blue dress with white polka dots ... and a bright, lively little cub."

The Berenstains' first bear story arrived on the desk of Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, who had found phenomenal success in 1957 with The Cat in the Hat and was now editor of a Random House series called "Beginner Books". Geisel took on the manuscript, but spent the next two years ruthlessly challenging the Berenstains to make improvements to the writing and structure and to connect with their characters on a deeper level. He asked questions such as "What kind of pipe tobacco does Papa Bear smoke?" and urged them to analyze the relationship between Papa Bear and Small Bear, to which Stan responded, mystified, "Well, he's the father, and he's the son"; however, Jan attributed the inspiration for the characters' dynamic to the 1931 film The Champ.

The book was finally published in 1962 under the title The Big Honey Hunt, with no plans to revisit the bears in a sequel. Geisel had told the Berenstains to feature a different animal in their next story, as "there are already too many bears... Sendak's got some kind of bear. There's Yogi Bear, the Three Bears, Smokey Bear, the Chicago Bears... for your next book you should do something as different from bears as possible." They had started work on a new project featuring a penguin when Geisel called and told them: "We're selling the hell out of the bear book." The second bear book, The Bike Lesson, appeared in 1964, featuring the names Stan and Jan Berenstain instead of Stanley and Janice; Geisel had changed the credit without consulting them. Geisel was also responsible for adding the name "Berenstain Bears" to the covers of succeeding books.

Over the next several decades, Stan and Jan collaborated on hundreds of books from their home studio outside Philadelphia. After developing a storyline together, one of them (usually Stan) would develop a first draft, which the other would then refine into a 1100-word manuscript. They also worked together on the illustrations. In 2002, the couple released a memoir of their career titled Down A Sunny Dirt Road.

Their son Michael also entered the family business after making his own foray into children's publishing as an author and illustrator of some 30 children's books. In the 1990s, he worked on a variety of Berenstain Bears books with his parents. Since Stan's passing away from lymphoma in 2005, Michael has collaborated with his mother on writing and illustrating new Berenstain Bears installments.

Source: Read more at Wikipedia.

About The Authors: Stan and Jan Berenstain (often called The Berenstains) were American writers and illustrators best known for creating the children's book series the Berenstain Bears.

Stanley "Stan" Berenstain (September 29, 1923 – November 26, 2005) was born in a neighborhood of west Philadelphia and died of cancer in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania. Janice "Jan" Berenstain (née Grant) (born July 26, 1923) was born in Philadelphia and was raised in west Philadelphia and attended Radnor High School. They met on their first day of class at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art in 1941 and married five years later, on April 13, 1946. They had two sons, Leo and Mike.

In an interview about the books, the Berenstains said that a big reason behind their inspiration was some of the difficulties parents faced, as well as some childhood tribulations when they were kids themselves. Their books evolved to include items such as cell phones and video game systems in the fictional Bear Country, which were nonexistent or very limited when the books were first published. The Berenstains also noted there were some issues which seemed to appear in every generation, such as kids throwing tantrums in public places, which made important subject matter for their stories. However, they deliberately wanted to steer clear of overly heavy issues such as violence.

In 1951, they published Berenstains' Baby Book, which dealt with the topics of pregnancy and raising a young child. Although containing practical advice, the book used humor and reminded parents not to take every situation too seriously.

They produced together the magazine cartoon feature It's All in the Family from 1956 to 1989 in McCall's and Good Housekeeping. They published their first book featuring the Berenstain Bears in 1962 and with the help of then-head of Beginner Books at Random House Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) created a lasting franchise including many more books, television series, toys, and stage productions. Jan was inducted into Radnor High School's Hall of Fame on October 20, 2006.

The Berenstains' cartoon feature It's All in the Family (unrelated to the similarly named TV series) appeared regularly in McCall's magazine and depicted the antics of a suburban family with mother, father, eldest and youngest sons, and middle daughter. It's All in the Family was not a conventional comic strip in the sense of a sequential progression of panels. Each issue featured a single situation, often seasonally appropriate, such as the daughter preparing, cooking, and serving a family meal for the first time or the costume preparations, rehearsal, and performance of the youngest child's Christmas pageant. Within a given issue, each It's All in the Family drawing was a stand-alone panel with a caption gag, rather than one panel of a sequential strip, but individual panels in order depicted the complete arc (preparation, completion, aftermath) of that issue's family experience.

Stan and Jan Berenstain's younger son Michael Berenstain (born in 1951) is a writer/illustrator and also illustrated many of the books written by his parents. He continues to work with his mother on new projects.

Bibliography:

See also List of The Berenstain Bears books (over 260)

• The Berenstains’ Baby Book (1951, MacMillan)
• Sister (1952, Schuman cartoons)
• Tax-Wise (1952, Schuman)
• Marital Blitz (1954, Dutton)
• Baby Makes Four (1956, MacMillan)
• It’s All in the Family (1958, Dutton)
• Lover Boy (1958, MacMillan)
• And Beat Him When He Sneezes (1960, McGraw Hill)
• Have a Baby, My Wife Just Had a Cigar (1960, Dell, retitled reprint)
• Bedside Lover Boy (1960, Dell)
• Call Me Mrs. (1961, MacMillan)
• It’s Still in the Family (1961, Dutton)
• Office Lover Boy (1962, Dell)
• The Facts of Life for Grown-ups (1963, Dell)
• Flipsville-Squareville (1965, Delacorte)
• Mr. Dirty vs. Mrs. Clean (1967, Dell)
• You Could Diet Laughing (1969, Dell)
• Be Good or I’ll Belt Ya! (1970, Dell)
• Education Impossible (1970, Dell)
• How to Teach Your Children about Sex without Making a Complete Fool of Yourself (1970, Dutton)
• Never Trust Anyone Over 13 (1970, Bantam)
• How to Teach Your Children about God without Actually Scaring Them out of Their Wits (1971, Dutton)
• Are Parents for Real? (1972, Bantam)
• The Day of the Dinosaur (1987, Random House, First Time Readers)
• After the Dinosaurs (1988, Random House, First Time Readers)
• What Your Parents Never Told You about Being a Mom or Dad (1995) parenting advice
• Down A Sunny Dirt Road (2002) autobiography
• The Berenstain Bears and The Bear Essentials (2005) parenting advice