Joey loved his teddy bear so hard and long and pure, so deeply and so truly and so powerfully that the bear began to grow a heart. A spirit heart, made of ghost instead of flesh and blood. It happens to toys sometimes. No one ever notices. When the Bear came alive in the haunted shopping mall, he was all that stood between life and death and Christmas. Alan Rodgers, has taken the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm and the Rev. Dodson, polished its edges here and there, added a pinch of this and a tablespoon of that, and had produced the almost-perfect successor to these 19th Century fables just as the 20th Century was drawing to a close. -- Mike Resnick