POLAR BEAR

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.