My mother’s maiden name was Kaplan. My favorite person in the whole world—after mom, of course—was my grandfather, Sam Kaplan. I even convinced my wife to give my son “Kaplan” as his middle name. So I must admit a touch of prejudice in reading cartoonist Terri Libenson’s daily strip, How could I resist the story of a family of Kaplans as told by someone who grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania? That’s where my Kaplans are from, too. All that, and the fact that “The Pajama Diaries” makes me laugh. TERRI LIBENSON podcast excerpt: "I've always drawn and I gravitated toward cartooning at a very young age. What inspired me was 'Peanuts'; I used to draw Snoopy and Woodstock all the time. My brother also had a lot of MAD magazines and I used to read those over and over again."  Before launching “The Pajama Diaries” in 2002, Terri was a writer and illustrator for American Greetings. She also did another strip for two years, “Got a Life.” This summer, Terri is taking the Kaplan family back to a time before Jill and Rob had kids. It’s a chance to fill in parts of the strip’s back story and probably give the artist a change of pace. Terri Libenson • • •