Book Descriptions
for Polar Bear by Candace Fleming and Eric Rohmann
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Predators and waning ice threaten the lives of a polar bear and her two cubs in a substantial informational picture book that spans the first year of the cubs’ lives. In April, Mother emerges from her den thin and hungry; instinct tells her to return “home” to the ice. Moving at the cubs’ pace, fending off wolves along the way, the bears arrive at the bay after six days and soon hunt a meal of ringed seal. Spring is a busy time: The cubs watch and imitate as Mother hunts. If she fails to put on enough fat now, she and the cubs will have little chance of surviving the summer. But the warm temperatures and melting ice make her job difficult; once, the three are stranded on an ice cap and only just make it back to land. In the summer, Mother’s fat and milk keep her and her cubs alive as they wait for the return of the ice and their food source. “But it is taking so long. Too long.” While climate change is not explicitly mentioned, the life-and-death tension of the narrative effectively underscores the importance of ice to polar bears’ survival as they navigate an ever-more-unpredictable landscape. Striking oil-paint illustrations add to the drama. (Ages 5-8)
CCBC Choices 2023. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2023. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
This companion book to the authors’ Sibert award-winning Honeybee explores the life and habitat of a majestic endangered species through dramatic text and sumptuous illustration.
April in the Arctic . . .
Cold winds send snow clouds scuttling across the sky.
Temperatures barely nudge above freezing.
But every now and again,
The cloud cover parts,
The sun shines down,
And the frozen world stretches awake.
As spring approaches in the Arctic, a mother polar bear and her two cubs tentatively emerge from hibernation to explore the changing landscape. When it is time, she takes her cubs on a forty-mile journey, back to their home on the ice. Along the way, she fends off wolves, hunts for food, and swims miles and miles.
This companion book to Honeybee and Giant Squid features the unique talents of Fleming and Rohmann on a perennially popular subject. Eric Rohmann's magnificent oil paintings feature (as in Honeybee) a spectacular gatefold of the polar landscape.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
April in the Arctic . . .
Cold winds send snow clouds scuttling across the sky.
Temperatures barely nudge above freezing.
But every now and again,
The cloud cover parts,
The sun shines down,
And the frozen world stretches awake.
As spring approaches in the Arctic, a mother polar bear and her two cubs tentatively emerge from hibernation to explore the changing landscape. When it is time, she takes her cubs on a forty-mile journey, back to their home on the ice. Along the way, she fends off wolves, hunts for food, and swims miles and miles.
This companion book to Honeybee and Giant Squid features the unique talents of Fleming and Rohmann on a perennially popular subject. Eric Rohmann's magnificent oil paintings feature (as in Honeybee) a spectacular gatefold of the polar landscape.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.
