The death of 82-year-old Stan Berenstain, who with his wife Jan created an industrial-sized publishing franchise around a family of bears by the same name, has gotten me thinking about the hours I spent with those Berenstain bears.

There was a lot about them that grated on my adult sensibilities. It bothered me that they don't have first names, for one thing. Just Momma and Poppa, Sister and Brother. What's with that horrible shower-cap-like headgear Momma always wears? Why is Poppa Bear such a doofus? And why is Sister so partial to pink?

But maybe it was that very generic, predictable framework that made the books so precious to my children growing up. They could always turn to Dr. Seuss for quirky individuality. And the Berenstains wrestle with issues that adults may minimize, but that loom large for kids: fear of the dark, the thumb-sucking habit, moving to a big-kid bed, being left with a sitter.

It was interesting to learn that Seuss himself, Ted Geisel, bought Stan and Jan Berenstain's first book about the bear family for Random House, where he was working as a children's book editor...I wonder if he had some special kid-friendly radar that helped him understand why these simple and predictable bears would would eventually rival Horton and Sam-I-Am as giants in the imaginative world of children.