In the Author Spotlight ...
Allen Northcutt, Author of
The Legend of Chris Moose

 

Christmas Eve 1982 - Author Allen Northcutt was in the process of getting a divorce, dealing with the many hurtful issues of raising a learning-disabled child and struggling to make ends meet. Living by himself, Allen began to think of a way to help increase his income while still supporting two households. Out of that time of melancholy, the character of Chris Moose was born.

"You've got Frosty and Rudolf, and the Night Before Christmas, even the Chipmunks. They all seemed to be very popular Christmas characters," explains Allen. "I thought 'Why don't I write a Christmas story about something'. Somehow the name Chris Moose pooped into my head." Allen sat down and three hours later The Legend of Chris Moose: The Ugliest/Most Beautiful Moose in the World was complete. "I just sat down and started writing," he says. "That was the first time I had written anything - the first and last time I'd wrote a book."

After that night, the manuscript for Chris Moose ended up in a drawer for over twenty-nine years. "I was in the investment business at the that time," says Allen. "The business that I ran for a regional brokerage firm was not very busy, therefor I had time to write the book and polish it up a bit. Then we got really busy and I literally forgot about the manuscript for years. I would pull it out every five or six years and think about publishing it, but then I would get busy doing something else. It ended up in the pile of things to do some day."

About two years ago, Allen decided it was time to bring his manuscript to life. "Motivation to resurrect Chris Moose came from friends' encouragement that Chris Moose could become the first new perennial Christmas character in the past fifty years," says Allen. "I decided I was going to find a printer and get this thing out to the marketplace."

The Legend of Chris Moose weaves a whimsical "ugly duckling" tale of animal friends that love an amiable but tattered moose whose name is Ugly. This picture book introduces eleven animal characters in rhyme as they join Ugly on a snowy trip through the woods to Momma and Poppa bears' house. There, a Christmas Eve party is made very special when Ugly gives unselfishly of himself to overcome a forgotten Christmas tree.

The Legend of Chris Moose addresses everyday issues of how ugly names are hurtful and it is not nice to exclude someone from a group because they are different. "In the end of book the animals embrace Ugly as part of their group and change his name to Chris Moose-because it sounds so much like Christmas and is what his spirit is all about," he says. "The lessons of this book is that It doesn't matter if you are fat or ugly or whatever, if your friends like you, then you are okay. This book is a reflection of what my learning disabled son and I have experienced in school and out in the real world."

 

To purchase your copy of The Legend of Chris Moose, visit
http://www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/03129.htm

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