{"id":33422,"date":"2021-10-04T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=33422"},"modified":"2021-10-04T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T12:00:00","slug":"bear-is-a-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=33422","title":{"rendered":"Bear Is a Bear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Bear Is a Bear <\/em>is a rare and exceptional book which, beginning with our third sentence, we will refer to&nbsp;simply as <em>Bear<\/em>.&nbsp; <em>Bear Is a Bear\u2019s<\/em> Bear is a wonderfully imagined and rendered friend who we will call Bear. \u201cBear is\u201d are a pair of words which begin every sentence in <em>Bear<\/em>\u2019s account of Bear and that is a practice we will honor here.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bearisabear-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bearisabear-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33424\" width=\"300\"\/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p><em>Bear<\/em> is a book made to share that you can hand to most anyone and tell them \u201cyou should read this one\u201d and they will do so and then clutch the book to their chest with warm tears on the edge of their eyes. <em>Bear<\/em> is a book that leaves the store with its new person still clutching it to their chest. <em>Bear<\/em> is  a book we keep a copy of near the register so that we can scan it in without its new owner having to relinquish it.<\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Bear<\/em> is a litmus test which reveals whether a person has an engaged soul or is a dry husk walking the earth without benign purpose. <em>Bear<\/em> is a book we all love at the bookstore, even Nick, who initially claimed to be unmoved, and for whom we did an intervention in which it was revealed that he did feel something moving behind his crusty exterior and that on the day Bear escapes from that arid, scabrous shield, the book and  its Bear will have saved Nick\u2019s life by having kept the pilot life of his soul safe and lit until the day it emerges to reengage with the world.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bifrost-300x201-1-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bifrost-300x201-1-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-33426\" width=\"200\"\/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>Bear is a bridge spanning worlds and elements of time, from the fleeting eternity of youth to the spooling motions of age. Bear is a friend for every occasion. Bear is a companion around every corner until it is time for him to sleep in memory and then return to connect both one generation to another and one person to their past selves. &nbsp;<em>Bear<\/em> is like the Bifrost Bridge only safer and less fraught.<\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Bear<\/em> is a book to share right now; it is like an infrastructure bill that everyone can agree on, supporting the tasks at hand and the tasks to come. <em>Bear<\/em> is a book we will have at the bookstore as long as we are both here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some thoughts on a special picture book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}