Alan Rodgers
Description
From the Inside Flap From the Introduction, by Mike Resnick Some time back, I mentioned to Alan Rodgers that I was putting together an anthology calle
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d Christmas Ghosts, and asked him if he’d care to do a story for it. He replied that he had a story that, with very few changes, could fit the format, and asked if I’d care to see it. I said yes, a few days passed, and The Bear Who Found Christmas arrived. I don’t think even Alan knew what he had accomplished, but I did, and I made out a contract that afternoon, because no one was going to buy that story out from under me. Alan Rodgers, who for most of his professional life eschewed short fiction and specialized in outstanding horror novels, had taken the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm and the Rev. Dodson, polished its edges here and there, added a pinch of this and a tablespoon of that, and had produced the almost-perfect successor to these 19th Century fables just as the 20th Century was drawing to a close. Like its predecessors, it will appeal to children — and like the very best of its predecessors, it will appeal even more to adults. The response to the anthology has been quite favorable, and the one story every critic singled out for praise was The Bear Who Found Christmas. So, from the Editor Who Found Christmas, to the Reader Who Is About To Find It — enjoy! Product Description Joey Robins loved his toy bear. Joey loved the bear so hard and long and pure, so deeply and so truly and so powerfully, that the bear began to grow a heart. Nobody ever would have known about Bear at all, in fact, if Joey hadnt lost him in the hotel beside the haunted shopping mall on Christmas Eve . . . And so begins a great quest, as the toy bear tries to find his way home. A timeless classic for all seasons. From the Publisher Alan Rodgers has won the Bram Stoker Award for his short fiction. He is the best-selling author of Fire and Night. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Joey Robinss Dad got transferred that December from Newport News to San Diego. Christmas time. Transferred at Christmas time. It was the worst news Joey had got in a year full of bad news: in a life full of rotten holidays and empty Christmases, moving cross-country at Christmas promised to make for the very worst Christmas of all. Because Joey hated moving. Hated it! Hated it three days before Christmas when the green-and-white Bekins van rumbled up to the old house with the front porch and the window frames made out of wood. Hated it as the movers loaded all their stuff in their big truck for hours in the bright Virginia cold. Hated it as they closed up the back of the moving van and drove away with everything but the car and Joey and a couple days worth of clothes. And his parents. And Bear. They sure couldnt take Bear. Joey wouldnt let them wouldnt no matter what. Because the stuffed toy bear was his only friend, when you got down to it. They were constant companions, or as constant as circumstances allowed. Joey had no other friends to speak of, partly because the Robinses never stayed anywhere long enough for Joey to get to know anyone. But partly too Joeys best friend was a stuffed toy bear because something in the boy was broken, busted good a good long time ago, and the plain fact was that Joey wasnt made right inside for getting on with people made of flesh and blood. Maybe it was moving that broke him. The Robinses moved at least three times every year, and sometimes more. That didnt make having friends impossible not quite. There were the kids back in Raleigh after hed been there six weeks theyd elected him president of his third-grade class for the month of March. But before April was over theyd moved again, to Boston. What good were friends like that when you could only have them for three months? And besides, the teacher really goaded the class into electing him. That wasnt fair, and when Joey was being honest with himself he knew it
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