The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree

Stan and Jan Berenstain were both born in 1923 in Philadelphia.  They didn't know each other as children, but met later at school, at the Philadelphia College of Art.  They liked each other right away, and found out that the both enjoyed the same kinds of books, plays, music and art.  During World War II, Stan was a medical assistant in the Army, and Jan worked in an airplane factory.  When the war was over, they got married and began to work together as artists and writers, primarily drawing cartoons for popular magazines.  After having their two sons Leo and Michael, the Berenstains decided to write some funny children's books that their children and other children could read and enjoy.  Their first published children's book was called The Big Honey Hunt.  It was about a family of bears, who later became known as the "Berenstain Bears."  


Stan and Jan planned all of their books together. They both wrote the stories and created the pictures.  They continued to live outside of Philadelphia in the country.  There are now over 300 Berenstain Bears books.

In this perfect-for-small-hands, sturdy board book version of a deliciously shivery, easy-to-read Berenstain Bears Bright and Early Book, three brave little bears explore the inside of a mysterious old tree and go into, up, through, over, down, and out. Simple rhyming text teaches the concept of directions as beginning readers enjoy a story and illustrations filled with thrills and chills of the gentlest kind.
 
Over the course of fifty years, Stan and Jan Berenstain wrote and illustrated hundreds of books about the Berenstain Bears in dozens of formats, from board books to beginning readers. Some of the most enduring are the stories in the groundbreaking Bright and Early Books and Beginner Books series.