Kenn Nesbitt - More Bears!

For Ally and Caitie

Copyright 2010 by Kenn Nesbitt
Cover and internal illustrations Troy Cummings
Cover and internal design 2010 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by William Riley/Sourcebooks
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

Source of Production: Leo Paper, Heshan City, Guangdong Province, China
Date of Production: August 2010
Run Number: 13248

Printed and bound in China.
LEO 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Once upon a time there was a story.

This story was a lovely story with absolutely no bears in itnot a single bear anywhere. Then one day

What? Who said that? The author of the story looked around the room, wondering where those voices had come from. Were those the voices of children shouting? Then he went back to writing.

As I was saying, this story had absolutely no bears at all. The author was very certain about this.

The author tried very, very hard to ignore the children who thought that the story ought to have

Fine. This story had a bear. It was a cute little baby bear strolling through the book looking for

Now hold on a second. The author of this story knew exactly how many bears it should have, and the author insisted there should only be

two bears. There. Happy now? An adorable, cuddly-wuddly little baby bear named Mr. Fluffy, and his mama bear, Stella, who always wore a yellow hat. Now it happened that Stella and Mr. Fluffy, like all bears, were especially fond of

more bears. Of course. The author was just thinking that. The author was thinking that, just to keep everybody happy, this story should have a papa bear, whose name, by the way, was Captain Picklehead,

and a bear named Uncle Sheldon who was bald and loved to play the ukulele. Now, where were we? Oh, yes

Stop that! How many bears do you want this story to have, anyway? Do you really want to hear about Bobcat Sam, the bear who rode a pony, and Admiral Haversham, the English dancing bear, and Excellent Steve, the bear who just wanted to surf?

You do? Wow. Why didn't you say so? In that case, the author suddenly decided that what this story really needed was

Yes, yes, yes. More bears. So the author added Astrobear, who, by the way, was Bulgarian and always kept a hamster in his pocket, just in case. And then the author put in three more bears named Lester, Chester, Ester, and Floyd. Wait. That's four! Oh well, four is okay, because, after all, this story really needed

It needed a bear named Lucky Eddie who juggled carrots,

and a bear named Elbow who wasn't very smart and always wore his underpants on the outside of his regular pants, and a bear named One-Two-Three, which even the author thought was a strange name for a bear.

And since this probably wasn't enough, the author added even

The author added six bears on tiny pink bicycles, two bears reading comic books, one bear flying across the page in a cape and lederhosen, three more bears swinging through trees on vines, a bear in a yellow submarine, several bears making cupcakes, and an entire team of fire-fighting bears running across the page with hoses, ladders, and party balloons.

There were bears hanging from the top of the page, bears sleeping in the corners, and bears standing on top of other bears. There were so many bears in the story that they couldn't all fit on the page.

It was crowded! Too crowded. So crowded that some bears started pushing other bears off of the page. And arguing. Which made the author grumpy. And when authors get grumpy, they start rewriting. Changing the story. In fact, this author was so grumpy he told the bears to leave. And they did. After all, this was the author's story.