Jan Berenstain, co-creator of the Berenstain Bears, dies
Jan Berenstain, who along with her husband Stan created the popular children’s books about the family of lovable “Berenstain Bears,” has died in Philadelphia, her publisher said on Monday, after suffering a stroke late last week. She was 88.
“We are all deeply saddened to share with you the news that Jan Berenstain, surviving member of one of the greatest teams in all children’s literature — Stan and Jan Berenstain — passed away last Friday,” publisher Random House said in a statement.
Live Chat: Margaret Atwood discusses In Other Worlds
Join us at noon on Monday, November 28 for a one-hour live chat with Margaret Atwood. The celebrated Canadian author will discuss her latest collection of essays, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (Signal Books) and answer reader questions.
Writing in the National Post, Zsuzsi Gartner called the book “a kind of encyclopedia: a quirky and admittedly personal primer on ‘imaginative writing.’” Read Gartner’s review of the book here.
Click here to read more about the book.
And click here for details on how to win the complete Signal Books library and a chance to see Atwood live in Toronto. (Illustration by Steve Murray)
Chuck Palahniuk writes a Hell of a story
For Madison Spencer, the 13-year-old narrator of Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel Damned, the most unpleasant thing about being doomed to Hell isn’t the “noxious Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm,” or even the giant, flesh-eating demons, but rather, endless screenings of The English Patient.
Not that Palahniuk, 49, wants to start a literary beef with Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, whose book the movie is based on. “I just wanted something that Madison would not really appreciate,” he says over the phone from his home in Portland, Ore. “And that’s a movie that was kind of a slog to get through, so Madison and I agree on that point.”
Besides, it seems nothing is safe from satire in the Fight Club author’s 12th novel, which can best be described as a cross between Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club and Dante’s Inferno. Like the latter, Damned is the first book in a planned trilogy, and Palahniuk says he’s almost finished writing the second. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
