The Teddy Bear: An Anthology

A loving attitude toward all manner of old bears is apparent from the first page of Theobolds's compilation of essays, poems, excerpts and short stories. From old photographs she has drawn color portraits of such bears as a Steiff (one such bear was posed for E. H. Shepard's drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh); the model for Aloysius in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited ; and other historical teddies that have made their marks. Simple, appealing pencil drawings accompany the rest of the collection: marching bears, dancing bears, playing bears. But the bulk of the text may be of more interest to adults than to children; some of the stories have been collapsed (italicized paragraphs provide a too-quick narrative of material that has been deleted) into shorter versions and have lost much of their charm, while others--such as a parody of A. A. Milne which appeared in Punch magazine in 1968--are quite sophisticated for young readers. There is something here for every bear lover, but each reader may have to do some wading to find it. All ages. (Mar.)