ICE JOURNEY OF THE POLAR BEAR

A polar bear has and then cares for two cubs in the rapidly melting Arctic.

Consciousness of climate change is woven throughout this snowy tale. “The ice broke up early again last spring—it always does now,” but a female bear has made her way over the floes to land, feasted on a drowned beluga whale with its tail tangled in a fishing net, dug a den in the snow, and settled down to sleep and wait out the winter. Emerging the following spring with two cubs in tow, she leads the way through unseasonable slush to the still-frozen sea to hunt for seals, and to teach her offspring how. But how will the bears survive, Jenkins asks, when the ice is gone? “I don’t think anybody knows.” In Baker-Smith’s impressionistic scenes, the mother bear, alone at first and then with her playful cubs, pads over dimly lit snowscapes past glimpses of open water loosely strewn with small bits of floating ice, pausing now and again to look out at viewers in silent enquiry. The author ends with further remarks about the causes of climate change and its effects on the bears’ habitat, then closes by urging readers to learn more about the issue and what they can do to help.

A low-key but fervent appeal to care, framed by atmospheric art.