Bear's Christmas Surprise - Softcover

Winthrop, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 075001198X ISBN 13: 9780750011983

Publisher: Hodder Wayland, 1995

Synopsis

While playing hide-and-seek with his babysitter, Mrs. Duck, Bear peeks at his Christmas presents and feels terribly guilty afterwards.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

It's one week before Christmas! When Nora leaves Bear home with Mrs. Duck so that she can do some last-minute shopping, he promises not to hunt for presents. Bear tries to be good, but he happens upon his gifts during a game of hide-and-seek. All Bear wants is a train, but none of the boxes seems the right shape. Soon Bear begins shaking and snooping, poking and peeking at his presents.

Now Bear is worried. Won't Nora be sad that he broke his promise! What will happen on Christmas morning?

About the Author:

Elizabeth Winthrop has written books in numerous genres for every age group over the course of her long career. Many of her works concern family relationships and are closely linked to the author's experience as a child or a mother. In addition to her many picture books, including Asleep in a Heap, Dumpy La Rue, and Squashed in the Middle, Winthrop has penned chapter books and novels for older children, and her critically acclaimed young-adult novels.

Winthrop grew up in Washington, DC, in "a large, ramshackle, sort of falling-down house. Although we were in the city itself, it was as if we were in the country. There was an acre of woods around our house. There was a stream at the bottom of the house where you could fish for crayfish." There were also plenty of books to capture the imagination, and her favorites included fantasies such as P.L. Travers's Mary Poppins and C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia," both of which influenced her own works for children, as well as Charles Dickens' tales and Laura Ingalls Wilder's autobiographical works. Watching her journalist father working helped Winthrop view writing as a serious career. "I would come home from school at three o'clock in the afternoon, and I would hear the keys of his old Underwood typewriter—BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG. And I saw him published and I saw that we had food on the table and shoes on our feet, and so it really dignified the profession of a writer."

Elizabeth attended Sarah Lawrence College with the intention of majoring in creative writing. Following advice, Winthrop went on to take a course in children's-book-writing in her senior year, and after graduation, sought a position in children's-book publishing.

Getting a job with noted editor and author Charlotte Zolotow at Harper and Row, Winthrop recalled the early 1970s as "the golden age of children's books" and con-siders herself privileged to have witnessed it first-hand. Harper and Row had, to my mind, the best people working in children's books, and it was because of Ursula Nordstrom, a legendary, brilliant, quixotic lady. I worked there under her, and that taught me more than I'd ever have been able to learn anywhere else." Winthrop was the assistant to an editor who read incoming manuscripts, and she used the situation to her full advantage. She once observed, "I would clean up her desk—she had a terribly messy desk—and I would put my manuscripts on it. I was constantly shuffling things around so that my manuscript was right on top of her pile. And they read some and turned some down, and then they read Bunk Beds and they liked it and they took it."

People often ask Winthrop why she writes for so many different ages. "It keeps me interested," is her reply. "The year I published a novel for adults (Island Justice) I also wrote three picture books. Island Justice took me two and a half years from the first inkling to the final draft. An idea for a picture book may germinate for months or even years, but the actual writing time can be as short as a week and it feels satisfying after years on one project to be able to finish a book in a matter of days. Each of the audiences I write for presents a different challenge and exercises a different writing muscle."

Elizabeth lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder Wayland
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 075001198X
• ISBN 13: 9780750011983
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 29