Touching Spirit Bear

by Ben Mikaelsen

  10. How did Buffy, the black bear you adopted and raised, come to be a part of your family?

  Buffy was a research animal. I don’t know a whole lot about his past, except that he had been declawed at a research facility and would most likely have been killed. Once they declaw an animal it cannot be released into the wild and zoos no longer want them for display. I have the same federal and state licenses as a zoo, which allows me to raise Buffy. But I do not recommend that people raise wild animals. I’ve seen many, many cases where people have tried and it always ends up tragically for the animal. If you raise a 50-pound dog wrongly, it becomes a 50-pound nuisance. If you raise a 750-pound bear wrongly, it can kill you. Raising Buffy has been a rewarding experience for me only because I have devoted my life to his care and well-being.

  11. Have you learned things from Buffy, as Cole learned things from the Spirit Bear?

  Yes, I have learned so many things from Buffy—the same lessons that Cole learned from the Spirit Bear. Buffy has taught me that how I treat him is how he treats me. This is also so true of how we treat the world in which we live. Buffy also taught me to be sensitive and kind. The only way Buffy will trust me is if I am trustworthy. You can’t lie to a bear the way you can to a human. Buffy has also taught me to accept and to forgive myself.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  A special thanks to those who patiently helped me understand the healing ways of Circle Justice.

  Books by Ben Mikaelsen

  TREE GIRL

  RED MIDNIGHT

  RESCUE JOSH MCGUIRE

  SPARROW HAWK RED

  STRANDED

  COUNTDOWN

  PETEY

  TOUCHING SPIRIT BEAR

  Winner:

  North Dakota Flicker Tale Book Award

  Nautilus Award for Young Adult Literature

  California Young Reader Medal

  Nevada Young Readers’ Award

  Nominee:

  Kansas Heartland Award

  Texas Lone Star Reading List

  Utah Young Adults’ Book Award

  New Mexico Land of Enchantment Book Award

  Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award Finalist

  Sequoyah Young Adult Book Award (Oklahoma)

  Rebecca Caudill Young Reader’s Book Award

  (Illinois)

  Young Hoosier Book Award (Indiana)

  South Carolina Young Adult Book Award

  Arizona Young Readers Award

  Wyoming Soaring Eagle Book Award

  Pacific Northwest Library Association Reader’s Choice

  Award

  Maude Hart Lovelace Book Award (Minnesota)

  Kentucky Bluegrass Award

  Copyright

  TOUCHING SPIRIT BEAR. Copyright © 2001 by Ben Mikaelsen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mikaelsen, Ben, 1952–

  Touching Spirit Bear / by Ben Mikaelsen.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After his anger erupts into violence, Cole, in order to avoid going to prison, agrees to participate in a sentencing alternative based on the Native American Circle Justice, and he is sent to a remote Alaskan island where an encounter with a huge Spirit Bear changes his life.

  ISBN 0-380-97744-3—ISBN 0-06-029149-4 (lib. bdg.)

  ISBN 0-380-80560-X (pbk.)—ISBN 0-06-073400-0 (pbk.)

  [1. Juvenile delinquents—Rehabilitation—Fiction. 2. Anger—Fiction. 3. Forgiveness—Fiction. 4. Child abuse—Fiction. 5. Tlingit Indians—Fiction. 6. Indians of North America—Alaska—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M5926 To 2000 00-040702

  [Fic]—dc21 CIP

  AC

  EPub Edition © March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200968-5

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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