“The Bear in There: A Quarantine Story” is the story of a teddy bear trying to figure out why he’s spending so much time in his cupboard and it was designed to help people not only talk to kids about this ongoing quarantine but to make kids feel proud for doing such a good job.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I couldn’t help but think about my nephew and nieces suddenly out of school and daycare and now stuck at home. This quarantine had not only totally ruined their plans of skinning their knees on foreign playgrounds and meeting all kinds of new people (both real and imaginary), but it also made them anxious, because kids are smart and know when something in their world is off.
Then one day a few weeks into the quarantine, my friend posted a photo of her childhood teddy bear sitting in her cupboard looking confused about what he was doing there. She aptly captioned it, “same.”
I imagined that little teddy bear being tucked safely away by the people who love him, nestling him between the blankets and towels of that linen closet and that if he just knew more about why he was staying in there and how it was helping, it could also be really comforting being a bear in there.
A rhymey line popped into my head as I looked at that photo and I found myself writing a little story about this teddy for my nieces and nephew, which then grew into a bigger project involving some of the most talented creative women in my life.
We decided to put our story out there on a website where people all over could access it for free. That way, people could cozy up with a kid they care about and watch the video or read it together and have a comforting talk about this quarantine and how it is making them feel.
We hope it has an impact on how kids understand and feel about this very confusing time and we hope you enjoy reading or watching it as much as we did making it.
