Dustin Greene is the creator, writer, and illustrator of Fred Bear's Adventures, a children's travel series inspired by real journeys, real places, and the curiosity that makes exploring them unforgettable.
By profession, Dustin comes from an engineering background—a world built around understanding how things work, solving problems, noticing details, and finding a way forward when the first solution does not work. At first glance, engineering and writing children's adventure books may seem like very different paths. For Dustin, however, they come from much the same place: curiosity.
An engineer looks at the world and asks, “How does that work?” Fred Bear looks at the world and asks the same question—usually followed by several more. Creating Fred gave Dustin a different way to use the curiosity, persistence, imagination, and problem-solving that have always been part of his life. Instead of solving only technical problems, he could build stories, worlds, memories, and adventures for children to explore.
But Fred's adventures began with something even more personal.
The places Fred visits are inspired by real adventures Dustin shares with the woman he lovingly calls his princess—the person beside him as they explore new cities, discover beautiful libraries, try local foods, wander through historic places, and create the memories that eventually find their way into Fred's stories. Their adventures together have become the foundation for many of Fred's journeys, with small moments, inside jokes, favorite places, and unexpected discoveries quietly preserved within the pages.
From riding a first-class steam locomotive through New England and exploring historic libraries, to standing beneath the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., traveling through the Florida Keys, discovering San Francisco, and celebrating Christmas in New York City, the experiences behind Fred's stories happen first in the real world.
Fred simply gets to experience them in his own way.
Through the eyes of an endlessly curious eight-year-old bear, famous landmarks become questions waiting to be answered, local foods become experiments worth trying, and the little unexpected moments often become more important than the places originally circled on the map.
Fred is not a perfect little travel guide. He gets excited. He gets distracted. Sometimes he misunderstands something. Sometimes he is nervous. Sometimes he is ridiculously confident about something he absolutely does not understand yet. He asks questions, tries again, laughs at himself, and occasionally becomes so excited that all he can do is point and say, “Look! Look!”
At the heart of every adventure are four simple ideas:
- Be Kind.
- Be Curious.
- Be Brave.
- Explore.
Fred Bear's Adventures was created to encourage children and families to discover the world around them, but the books have another purpose too: preserving the memories that make traveling together special.
Years from now, places change. Details fade. Photographs remind us what something looked like, but stories can help us remember what it felt like.
That is part of what Fred carries home from every adventure—and part of what Dustin hopes families will carry home from their own.