Hi, I’m Charlie. That’s me in the photo, with Merrybell, my true love. The lady holding us is Isabel, but I call her "Mom." She’s almost ninety three now, but she’s what non-bear folks call "sharp as a tack." I wish you could know her the way I do, because she’s good people.

I was just a young bear when I was abandoned in a box in a lonely attic because of something awful called the "War Effort." Someone finally took me to an auction far away. That’s where Mom rescued me. Was I ever lucky! She bought the whole box of old photos, a dumb egg beater, and stuff that had stuck together, just to get me.

What happened next is, on the way home I told her my name and asked what was going to happen now to me. She almost wrecked the car!

But everyone speaks to their cats and dogs. And, if you think about it, flowers and trees, and even some people you never met before can all "speak" to you in a special way. That’s all that happened. After all those years alone in that dark attic, I saw her smiling at me with those crinkly-cornered eyes of hers, and this invisible thread of hope and longing passed between us. That’s why Mom started hearing me in the car that first wonderful day.

Since then, Mom and I talk all the time. She does a lot of things like painting and weaving, and helps make our community a better place to live, but she has come to see us as a team. So we decided to write this book.

See the other photo on the right? That’s Mom’s daughter, Peg. We talk a lot too.Like our Mom, she does lots of things including writing about music and art and owning an art gallery. But she wanted to help me and Mom make our memoir even better.

Even if Teddy Bears don’t talk to you, I bet something else does. Read our book, and you’ll see what I mean.