“Teddies to the Rescue” is offered now by means of my site: theclickercenter.com and thru Amazon and different booksellers. To study extra about the actual story behind “Teddies to the Rescue” learn on:
“Teddies to the Rescue” is the primary guide within the Kenyon Bear sequence. It was initially a Christmas current for my mom.
I take heed to so many interviews through which individuals speak about their horrible childhoods and their alcoholic, abusive mother and father. I’m virtually embarrassed to say that I had beautiful mother and father. I “selected” them effectively.
One of many nice classes I realized from each of my mother and father was you create your personal actuality. Once I was twelve, my mom determined it was time to cease being a stay-at-home mother. School tuitions had been looming sooner or later, and it was time to enhance the household funds. As a substitute of trying round for a “regular” job, my mom created her personal job. She determined to utilize her lifelong ardour for amassing.
Collectors accumulate. If my mom had been stranded on a desert island, she would have collected shells and fascinating pebbles. Since she had extra scope than a desert island offers, her collections had been rather more wide-ranging. There have been occasions when the home resembled a museum greater than a spot individuals really lived.
My mom preferred to gather. It was the hunt that appealed to her. She wasn’t a hoarder. She didn’t must maintain every little thing she discovered. She was completely completely satisfied creating a set, having fun with it for a time, after which promoting it on. So the “job” she selected was opening a herb store. The store gave her the proper excuse to go looking and the herb store gave her the proper setting.
A herb store is its personal self. It’s no matter you need it to be. My mom introduced all of her pursuits collectively to create a store that was a novel and enchanting expertise. It was half vintage store, half specialised backyard heart, half artwork gallery, half meals boutique, half guide retailer, and most significantly half toy store. Should you wished one thing particular, one thing you weren’t going to seek out in different shops or present catalogs, you went to The Shuttle Hill Herb Store.
One Saturday after I was within the store, an older woman got here in and requested us if we’d be eager about carrying pears. Pears? That appeared very odd. We weren’t positive what she meant. It was a busy morning. We didn’t actually have time to speak to her. My mom excused herself to go assist one other buyer and this woman left the store. She returned a short while later with a field full of handmade teddy bears.
Not pears. Bears.
They had been enchanting. They had been fantastically made. Sure. We might be delighted to promote her bears within the store.
That was the start of an exquisite relationship with Jane Kenyon, the maker of the store’s bears. We put them up within the entrance window the place everybody going previous might see them. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than the bears began to have adventures.
Mrs Kenyon made an additional giant bear for the store. In fact, he was referred to as Kenyon in her honor. In “Teddies to the Rescue” I write:
“Kenyon is the store’s bear. He lives within the window all yr spherical.
At Christmas he clothes up as Santa Bear and arms out items to all the opposite bears.”
“At Easter he places on lengthy rabbit ears and pretends he’s the Easter Bunny.”
“In between occasions he clothes to go well with the season, and the opposite bears be a part of him. They’re so humorous. In the summertime they go swimming with internal tubes and flippers.
At Halloween they gown up in scary ghost costumes and go Trick or Treating.”
All of that was true.
The bears had many adventures within the window. One in all our clients lent us a few of his vintage toys for the bears. He introduced us a steel horse and a giant inexperienced automotive. Within the winter I let Kenyon have my snow sneakers and the bears went tenting. In the summertime they relaxed in hammocks and seaside chairs.
Individuals stopped in simply to see the bears. Each Saturday Mrs Kenyon would deliver us one other field full of probably the most lovely, enchanting, and magical bears. The bears discovered loving properties, all aside from one amber coloured bear who was returned to us in probably the most horrible situation.
He was lacking an ear and his stuffing was falling out of enormous holes in what had as soon as been his lovely mohair fur.
We despatched him again to Mrs Kenyon for repairs. She patched him up as greatest she might. She made him a sailor go well with to cowl up the worst of the repairs.
That bear’s title is Amber and he nonetheless lives in my home. It’s his story that I share in “Teddies to the Rescue”.
Jane Kenyon’s son was a proficient artist. Within the fall of 1985 I urged to him that we create a kids’s guide collectively to offer as a Christmas current to our moms. I might write the story, and he might illustrate it.
Mark and I pulled out our favourite kids’s books to match what we preferred for illustrations. We went in opposition to the development of the day which was strongly influenced by Disney motion pictures. We selected as an alternative black and white, pen and ink illustrations.
The consequence was “Teddies to the Rescue” which we gave to each our moms that Christmas.
In fact, they beloved the guide. That goes with out saying. Moms are biased. They’d have beloved it it doesn’t matter what it was like. You may’t go by their opinion. I used to be biased as effectively, however that’s okay. I beloved what we had created. Mark’s illustrations captured the magic of all my favourite kids’s books.
We determined to take the subsequent step and publish the guide. I had heard concerning the difficulties of getting books revealed, particularly books that didn’t match the accepted norms. We had created a chapter guide for younger readers. (This was lengthy earlier than the Harry Potter books made it okay once more for youngsters’s books to have chapters.) And we had pen and ink drawings as an alternative of the Disney-influenced illustrations that had been the norm.
We made the choice to publish the guide ourselves. Now keep in mind this was 1986. We’re basically speaking the pre-digital age. We had been ready to make use of the typesetting gear on the State College, however the typesetting was executed blind. On my very primitive model of a house pc, I might guess on the formatting I wished, ship it the pc on the State College and a number of other days later, I might get again a scroll of typesetting paper.
As I unrolled it, I all the time felt as if I used to be again within the days of the traditional Romans.
The textual content on the scroll needed to be minimize and pasted onto story boards. A narrative board is strictly what it appears like, a stiff piece of cardboard on which a pair of going through pages are laid out.
The scroll of paper was minimize up and the suitable textual content together with any illustrations had been glued to the story board. On fairly just a few of the pages we wished the textual content to wrap across the illustrations. If the indents weren’t fairly proper, I might guess on the corrections. I might see the coding on the pc display, however not how the web page would really look.
I might ship within the corrections, and some days later I might get one other scroll of typesetting. It was a laborious course of as a result of virtually proper wasn’t ok. We went by means of approximation after approximation till each Mark and I had been happy with the consequence.
A stack of story boards was lastly despatched off to the printer. Just a few weeks later the blues arrived. That’s a photocopy printed from the ultimate plates. The blues are your final likelihood to identify any typos and make any wanted corrections earlier than the guide goes to press. Modifications are costly at this level so you need to hope you haven’t made any main errors.
With that final hurdle cleared, the books had been printed. We had been bold. We ordered a print run of 5,000 books. That may have been a good printing even for the foremost presses. It was very bold for an unknown writer with a self revealed guide.
The books arrived in time for Christmas 1986.
By that point Mark and I had been already at work on a second guide: “Edgrr The Bear Who Wished to be Actual”. We revealed that story the next Christmas and the next yr we revealed the third guide within the Kenyon Bear sequence, “Sara’s Story – The Bear No one Wished”. Mark needed to bow out of illustrating this third story. His non-artist work life was taking an excessive amount of of his time to work on a 3rd guide, so Sara’s Story was illustrated by one other good good friend, Jane Isabella. Jane was knowledgeable artist who labored for us once in a while within the store. Jane introduced her personal type and sense of caprice to the pen and ink drawings.
Sara was revealed simply in time for Christmas 1988. By that point we had offered out of Teddies to the Rescue and we had been working low on Edgrr. However we didn’t do one other print run of both guide as a result of my mom had lastly determined that after virtually 20 years of working the store she was able to retire. 1989 was the final full yr within the store. Once we closed in January 1990, we had offered out of all three books. That was fairly an achievement.
Kenyon, Edgrr, Sara and all the opposite bears who had been featured within the books went dwelling to dwell with me. I nonetheless have all of them. They dwell in a room very very similar to that described within the guide, an upstairs bed room that’s overseen by the very aged, and far beloved teddy bear my mom had as a baby.
I wrote two extra Kenyon Bear tales, however I used to be busy with horses. I by no means had these tales illustrated, and for a few years they lay forgotten in a pile of different papers.
When the tree fell on my home in 2020, the story of the Upstairs Armadillo wasn’t the one manuscript that I discovered. I unearthed the unpublished Kenyon Bear books plus a number of different tales I had written.
Covid had shut down all journey. I had time to learn. Time to dream. Time to write down.
“No guide is basically value studying on the age of 10 which isn’t equally – and infrequently way more – value studying on the age of fifty and past.” C.S. Lewis
“Trendy Horse Coaching” was the precedence. That guide developed out of the on-line clinics that I developed to take the place of the in-person clinics that the virus shut down. Now that it’s efficiently launched, I can flip my consideration again to the kids’s books.
So lastly, in spite of everything as of late of teasing you with details about my latest publishing enterprise, let me inform you how one can get “Teddies to the Rescue”:
You may order “the brand new guide”Teddies To The Rescue” by means of my site:
theclickercenter.com and thru Amazon.
Please word: In the mean time (that means August 25, 2023), each the paperback and onerous cowl editions can be found by means of my site. Solely the hardcover is presently listed on Amazon. The paperback version ought to be out there on Amazon throughout the subsequent day or two. The unique version continues to be listed on Amazon despite the fact that it has been out of print for years. You’ll want to order the brand new version.
In case you are ordering from outdoors america, I like to recommend utilizing Amazon to keep away from the worldwide transport expenses.
And do please depart a 5 star overview on Amazon. That can assist others discover the guide.
