I read a few years back that you visit schools and speak to students. What do you talk to them about, and what do you enjoy most about those visits?
I always like to read them one of the books and give them a demonstration of how to draw the Berenstain Bears. Kids like to watch you draw. But what I enjoy most is talking to kids during book signings. The bookstore people always want to rush kids through this to get as many books signed as possible so it can degenerate into author-as-signing-machine.
But the nice part is talking to them. They’re very funny. As when a kid comes up wearing a big Star Wars T-shirt and I say, “So, you’re a Star Wars fan, huh?” It’s wonderful to watch the look of mystified astonishment that comes over the kid’s face—“How does he know that? He’s a mind-reader!”
When it is pointed out to him that it actually says, “Star Wars” right on his shirt, the way in which he will grab the shirt to turn it around to look at it and confirm the fact that it does, indeed, say, “Star Wars” right on his shirt—a detail he’d forgotten since he put it on that morning.
Tell us a little bit about the origin of the Stan & Jan Berenstain Healthy Kid Foundation and what it does.
The Stan and Jan Berenstain Healthy Kids Foundation is named in honor of my parents and inspired by the childhood-celebrating and family-affirming message of their life’s work. The Foundation receives on-going financial support from the Berenstain family.
The book The Berenstain Bears’ Hospital Friends was published to celebrate the launch of the Foundation. This represents a fulfillment of our long-cherished dream of adding a story about visiting the hospital to the Berenstain Bears series, which has for decades been a source for children coping with new experiences and difficult health problems.
For years, this dream remained on the backburner. But when I married pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist Dr. Laura Diaz–a.k.a. Dr. Laura Berenstain–we immediately began making it a reality. With Laura’s help, I toured the hospital where she worked, interviewed staff and used sketches made in every medical department to create the illustrations. The book seeks to make the hospital a more comfortable place for children to enter, as patients or as visitors, and highlights the skills and dedication of a whole array of medical professionals.
The Foundation’s newest partnership is with the Heart to Heart Foundation. This came about, in part, through the efforts of Laura who was part of a team of medical personnel organized by Heart to Heart to travel to Tomsk in Siberia to train Russian pediatric cardiac teams in surgical techniques. Heart to Heart is expanding their program to Peru and asked the Berenstain Foundation to provide support and funding for this effort.
In June of 2017, I accompanied a group of Doctors from Heart to Heart that included Laura on a trip to Peru to provide life-saving heart surgeries to Peruvian Children who otherwise would not have access to such high level health-care. Upon arrival to INCOR (the Peruvian National Hospital located in Lima) The Heart to Heart team jumped into action and was busy training the INCOR staff, participating in Lectures and presentations on various ventricular diseases, and assisting in surgeries.
Meanwhile, I documented much of the trip in a sketchbook, capturing the team interacting with INCOR staff, prepping for surgery, and patients in recovery. These sketches and more about the Foundation and its work can be found at BerenstainFoundation.org.
What is the most surprising thing that has happened as a result of the series’ creation?
I’ve been most surprised by the controversy which has grown up over the spelling and pronunciation of our family name. It’s always been spelled, “BerenstAin” not “BerenstEin.” It’s pronounced as it is spelled, Beh-ren-stane as in “coffee stain” or “ink stain” or “grape juice stain.” Exactly how this particular spelling came about, we don’t know. It’s been spelled that way ever since my great grandparents got off the boat. Perhaps it was just an attempt to phonetically reproduce “Berenstein” as expressed in a heavily Slavo-Yiddish accent—something like, “Behrrrn-sheytn” which is how my father said his grandmother pronounced it.
If you go online, you will find that many believe that our name actually is “Berenstein”—but in an alternate reality. They think all the books originally said “The Berenstein Bears” but, at some point in the past, they spontaneously switched over to the “Berenstain” spelling. I’m sure that a quantum physicist could explain this but none of us would be able to understand the explanation.
Click through to find out the most unusual product that featured the Berenstain Bears…