Polar Bear

by Candace Fleming, Eric Rohmann (Illustrator)

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823454358
Publisher:	Holiday House
Publication date:	12/06/2022
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	58 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Candace Fleming is the author of more than thirty distinguished books for children including Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera, winner of an Orbis Pictus Honor and the Sibert Medal for most distinguished informational book, and Cubs in the Tub: The True Story of the Bronx Zoo's First Woman Zookeeper. Her book The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh received the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. She lives in Chicago.

Eric Rohmann is the award-winning author and/or illustrator of many beloved books for children. He received a Caldecott Honor for Time Flies and a Caldecott medal for My Friend Rabbit.  He also collaborated with Candace Fleming on Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera, winner of an Orbis Pictus Honor and the Sibert Medal for most distinguished informational book. They live in Chicago, Illinois.

Editorial Reviews

"Polar Bear is both a paean to a swiftly changing Arctic habitat and a deeply affecting story about fierce mother love. . . . While Fleming's narration is building suspense and wonder, the Caldecott medalist Eric Rohmann's lush paintings move in for close-ups and stretch out to reveal the fantastic breadth of an icy landscape. . . . Fleming and Rohmann's respect and awe for these animals is palpable."—The New York Times

★  "With their usual dynamism and immediacy, Fleming and Rohmann turn their attention to polar bears. . . . [An] outstanding book.."—The Horn Book, Starred Review
 
★  "Gorgeous illustrations capture a fragile ecosystem, making this an outstanding collaboration that belongs in all library collections."—School Library Journal, Starred Review

★ "Using lyric prose that carefully avoids anthropomorphism, Fleming vividly depicts this Hudson Bay, Ontario, setting and these apex predators. . . . Rohmann's magnificent oil paintings feature blue, green, and gray backgrounds that nicely set off the bears. . . . A majestic polar plunge not to be missed."—Booklist, Starred Review
 
"Polar Bear wisely and effectively brings climate change into focus. . . . Another wondrous collaboration from the Sibert Medal-winning team of Candace Fleming and Eric Rohmann (Honeybee). Fleming masterfully builds suspense, and her text will have readers rooting hard for this family of bears. . . . Her lovely, lilting prose accompanies Caldecott Medalist Rohmann's breathtaking oil illustrations, which include an effective double gatefold showing the struggling bears adrift after ice melts too early."—Shelf Awareness

"Portrays beauty and suspense. . . . Fleming’s lengthy verses persuasively portray the world through a polar bear’s senses, and Rohmann’s vivid close-ups of the bears are matched by spacious spreads that capture the distinctive light of the north."—Publishers Weekly

"With the same care for detail and drama brought to the honeybee in Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera (BCCB 2/20), Fleming turns here to the polar bear. . . . Fleming brings a lyricism to her depiction, with a gentle cadence moving steadily alongside the family. . . . Rohmann’s signature painterly art . . . highlight[s] the regality and strength of her form backgrounded by wintry scenes in sweeps of whites, blues, and grays."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

From the Publisher

★ 10/28/2022

Gr 2–5—A gripping drama captured in scientifically rich but not overwhelming text. The Sibert Medal-winning team (Honeybee) now takes readers to the Arctic to witness the life of a mother polar bear and her cubs. Emerging from winter with two children, after months of living off her stored fat, the mother must now find food. Seamlessly blending details about polar bears into a dramatic tale, Fleming takes readers to the water's edge where the mother bear hunts for ringed seals in the icy waters of springtime on the Hudson Bay. Climate change has made the life of a polar bear even more challenging, and the author has done a masterful job of connecting readers to the plight of this one family. Neither illustrations nor book design anthropomorphize the animals but readers will be on the edge of their seats as they follow the trio on their journey of survival, made all the more treacherous by a warming planet. Back matter, including a caption-rich diagram of a polar bear, additional resources for more learning, and ideas for the fight against climate change are included. VERDICT Gorgeous illustrations capture a fragile ecosystem, making this an outstanding collaboration that belongs in all library collections.—John Scott

School Library Journal

2022-09-14
The creators of Honeybee (2020) tell the story of a polar bear in the wild shepherding her two cubs through their first boreal year.

Readers hoping for a complete overview of a polar bear’s life cycle will have to look elsewhere, but Rohmann’s scenes of roly-poly cubs sleeping in a heap, gazing up at viewers, and wrestling in settings either icy or strewn with summer wildflowers as mom sniffs the air alertly serve those content with partial glimpses of the big, furry cuties well enough. A brush with two wolves who are quickly driven off and an exhausting swim portrayed in a double gatefold after a chunk of ice breaks off and somehow carries the bears far out to sea before they can react add some manufactured drama. But, Fleming makes clear, the main danger polar bears face is that the sea ice will not remain frozen long enough for mother bear to hunt the seals she needs to survive both long months in the den with newborn cubs and the summer when that main source of food (never shown here being either caught or eaten) becomes too difficult to catch. This leads to a superficial description of climate change in the backmatter, which also offers a list of extra polar bear facts. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Straightforward though somewhat bland, especially compared with the creators’ earlier collaboration. (websites, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews