Local resident Lela Belviy just published her first children’s book, “The Three Little Teddy Bears.”
The story is about three teddy bears sitting on the shelf of a toy store. The blue bear, Cater Bug, and the pink bear, Bobby Boo, find their forever homes quickly.
The plain, beige teddy bear is left on the shelf, wondering if he will ever find his forever girl or boy.
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Beige one is Sugarboo
Born in the small town of St. Francisville, Illinois, Belviy has lived in Indiana since 1982.
“I lived in Indianapolis for 25 years and then moved to Seymour,” Belviy said. “I was a foster parent for 10 years, then was fortunate and blessed enough to adopt two of my children.”
She and her husband, Bob Belviy, have three daughters and six grandchildren.
Belviy went on to say she worked for a major insurance company for 40 years and retired in 2017.
“This is my first published book, but I’ve always made up stories for my nieces, nephews, children and grandchildren,” Belviy said. “They loved the stories and would often ask me to tell them again and again.”
Unfortunately, she didn’t always remember exactly how the story was told the first time.
“Eventually, I decided to start writing these stories down,” she said. “With all the time I spent at home during shutdowns due to Covid-19, I worked on my story.”
Belviy said she published her first book through Pen It! Publications, just south of Columbus in Scipio. Debra Stanton is the president of that company.
“The illustrator did a wonderful job with the art work,” she said. “There is a little girl in the book that looks a lot like me, with the same hair style and everything and it’s funny because the illustrator didn’t know what I looked like.”
Belviy said she made up the teddy bear story a long time ago for her niece and people had been wanting her to put it on paper for awhile now.
“With COVID-19 quarantines and shutdowns, there was a lot of time and not much we could do,” she said. “So it was a perfect time to explore more creative outlets.”
Friends and family had been encouraging her to get the book published, so she did.
“When my niece was ordering one of the books on Amazon, it showed three teddy bears for purchase further down on the screen,” she said. “They looked a lot like the ones in my book, so I said I had to have them.”
Belviy added the book, paired with a teddy bear, would make a nice gift. She hopes people enjoy reading the book as much as she enjoyed writing it.
This is the first book in “The Little Teddy Bears” series and Belviy has two more to be published with Pen It! Publications. At the moment though, she is waiting in line for the same illustrator that designed her current book.
“It didn’t take me very long to write this first one because I already knew the story in my mind,” she said. “The next one in the series is where Sugar Boo meets the ugly bug and the third one is about Sweetie Pie, the white squirrel that visited my backyard last year.”
Belviy has always enjoyed making up stories and what thrills her the most is when people tell her they read her story to their grandchildren and they loved it.
“The Three Little Teddy Bears” can be purchased on Amazon.com or the penitpublications.com website.