“Teddies to the Rescue” is accessible now by means of my site: theclickercenter.com and thru Amazon and different booksellers. To be taught extra about the actual story behind “Teddies to the Rescue” learn on:

“Teddies to the Rescue” is the primary ebook within the Kenyon Bear collection. It was initially a Christmas current for my mom.

I take heed to so many interviews during which folks discuss their horrible childhoods and their alcoholic, abusive mother and father. I’m virtually embarrassed to say that I had pretty mother and father. I “selected” them nicely.

One of many nice classes I discovered from each of my mother and father was you create your personal actuality. After I was twelve, my mom determined it was time to cease being a stay-at-home mother. School tuitions have been looming sooner or later, and it was time to reinforce the household funds. As a substitute of wanting round for a “regular” job, my mom created her personal job. She determined to utilize her lifelong ardour for gathering.

Collectors accumulate. If my mom have been stranded on a desert island, she would have collected shells and attention-grabbing pebbles. Since she had extra scope than a desert island gives, her collections have been rather more wide-ranging. There have been occasions when the home resembled a museum greater than a spot folks really lived.

My mom appreciated to gather. It was the hunt that appealed to her. She wasn’t a hoarder. She didn’t must hold every little thing she discovered. She was completely completely happy 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 searching 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 singular and enchanting expertise. It was half vintage store, half specialised backyard middle, half artwork gallery, half meals boutique, half ebook retailer, and most significantly half toy store. For those who needed one thing particular, one thing you weren’t going to search out in different shops or reward 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 fascinated 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 crammed with handmade teddy bears.
Not pears. Bears.

They have been enchanting. They have been superbly made. Sure. We’d be delighted to promote her bears within the store.

That was the start of a beautiful relationship with Jane Kenyon, the maker of the store’s bears. We put them up within the entrance window the place everybody going previous may see them. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than the bears began to have adventures.

Mrs Kenyon made an additional giant bear for the store. After all, 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 attire up as Santa Bear and palms 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 attire to swimsuit the season, and the opposite bears be part of him.  They’re so humorous.  In the summertime they go swimming with interior 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. Certainly one of 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 footwear and the bears went tenting. In the summertime they relaxed in hammocks and seaside chairs.

Folks stopped in simply to see the bears. Each Saturday Mrs Kenyon would carry us one other field crammed with essentially the most stunning, enchanting, and magical bears. The bears discovered loving houses, all aside from one amber coloured bear who was returned to us in essentially the most horrible situation.

He was lacking an ear and his stuffing was falling out of huge holes in what had as soon as been his stunning mohair fur.

We despatched him again to Mrs Kenyon for repairs. She patched him up as finest she may. She made him a sailor swimsuit 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 gifted artist. Within the fall of 1985 I advised to him that we create a youngsters’s ebook collectively to provide as a Christmas current to our moms. I might write the story, and he may illustrate it.

Mark and I pulled out our favourite youngsters’s books to match what we appreciated for illustrations. We went towards 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 end result was “Teddies to the Rescue” which we gave to each our moms that Christmas.

After all, they cherished the ebook. That goes with out saying. Moms are biased. They might have cherished it it doesn’t matter what it was like. You may’t go by their opinion. I used to be biased as nicely, however that’s okay. I cherished what we had created. Mark’s illustrations captured the magic of all my favourite youngsters’s books.

We determined to take the following step and publish the ebook. I had heard in regards to the difficulties of getting books revealed, particularly books that didn’t match the accepted norms. We had created a chapter ebook for younger readers. (This was lengthy earlier than the Harry Potter books made it okay once more for kids’s books to have chapters.) And we had pen and ink drawings as an alternative of the Disney-influenced illustrations that have been the norm.

We made the choice to publish the ebook ourselves. Now bear in mind this was 1986. We’re primarily speaking the pre-digital age. We have been ready to make use of the typesetting tools on the State College, however the typesetting was accomplished blind. On my very primitive model of a house laptop, I might guess on the formatting I needed, ship it the pc on the State College and several other days later, I might get again a scroll of typesetting paper.

As I unrolled it, I at all times felt as if I used to be again within the days of the traditional Romans.

The textual content on the scroll needed to be lower and pasted onto story boards. A narrative board is precisely what it seems like, a stiff piece of cardboard on which a pair of going through pages are laid out.

The scroll of paper was lower up and the suitable textual content together with any illustrations have been glued to the story board. On fairly just a few of the pages we needed the textual content to wrap across the illustrations. If the indents weren’t fairly proper, I might guess on the corrections. I may 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 adequate. We went by means of approximation after approximation till each Mark and I have been happy with the end result.

A stack of story boards was lastly despatched off to the printer. A couple of 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 ebook goes to press. Modifications are costly at this level so you must hope you haven’t made any main errors.

With that final hurdle cleared, the books have been printed. We have been formidable. We ordered a print run of 5,000 books. That will have been a good printing even for the foremost presses. It was very formidable for an unknown writer with a self revealed ebook.

The books arrived in time for Christmas 1986.

By that point Mark and I have been already at work on a second ebook: “Edgrr The Bear Who Wished to be Actual”. We revealed that story the next Christmas and the next yr we revealed the third ebook within the Kenyon Bear collection, “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 ebook, so Sara’s Story was illustrated by one other good buddy, Jane Isabella. Jane was knowledgeable artist who labored for us on occasion 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 have been working low on Edgrr. However we didn’t do one other print run of both ebook 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 residence to dwell with me. I nonetheless have all of them. They dwell in a room very very like that described within the ebook, an upstairs bed room that’s overseen by the very aged, and far cherished teddy bear my mom had as a toddler.

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 jot down.

“No ebook is de facto price studying on the age of 10 which isn’t equally – and infrequently much more – price studying on the age of fifty and past.” C.S. Lewis

“Fashionable Horse Coaching” was the precedence. That ebook advanced 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 youngsters’s books.

So lastly, in any case lately of teasing you with details about my latest publishing enterprise, let me let you know how one can get “Teddies to the Rescue”:

You may order “the brand new ebook”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 laborious cowl editions can be found by means of my site. Solely the hardcover is at the moment listed on Amazon. The paperback version ought to be accessible on Amazon throughout the subsequent day or two. The unique version continues to be listed on Amazon though it has been out of print for years. It would be best to order the brand new version.

In case you are ordering from outdoors the USA, I like to recommend utilizing Amazon to keep away from the worldwide delivery expenses.

And do please depart a 5 star overview on Amazon. That can assist others discover the ebook.