The is the second book I've read this month that focuses on the plight of natural habitats, global warming, and the dire need to take care of our earth.

When a mother polar bear has two baby cubs, she stays behind the others in order to take care of her babies. As spring approaches, it is increasingly difficult to find food for herself and for her babies.

The illustrations are lush and the illustrator, [[Ilya Spirin]] is the son of my top favorite illustrator [[Gennady Spirin]]

This book will resonate with anyone who appreciates the earth, and animals and understands what is happening to our planet.
And, it will be eye opening to those who haven't learned of globabl warming.

Four Stars ( )

Due to my students' recent interest in parents occupations and taking care of children, I chose to read a book about a mother polar bear and how she cares for her cubs throughout the harsh winters in the arctic. I initially chose the book for the illustrations, which were realistic and engaging. The book begins with a mother polar bear, ready for hibernation, weighing in at 800 pounds. This extra fat will keep her warm while she hibernates. During this hibernation, she gives birth to two cubs whom she nurses and cares for until it is warm enough to go outside. As the cubs get older, the small family comes across many obstacles to survival including other polar bears, wolves, lack of food, melting ice, and mosquitos. Throughout each hardship, the mother polar bear protects her cubs and teaches them to walk through snow, stay clean and dry, hunt for seal blubber, and dig after lemmings. The book ends with the cubs hunting independently and preparing for the next winter's hibernation.

My first instinct about the book being too long was validated when I had to begin paraphrasing halfway through the book. The book contained really good information, but far too many details for my 4 and 5 year old students. This is no fault of the book, I found this book to be more appropriate for much older children. I did not feel that it was inappropriate to use this book in my pre-k classroom, as long as the read aloud was interactive. My children gained a lot of knowledge from the pictures and enjoyed making predictions. I liked how the words were printed in a text box, which gave me an opportunity to point out to my students the words I was reading. The information we learned from this read aloud came from those words. I found myself telling them “Ms. Dalton is not a polar bear expert. I am just reading the words!” as a way to reinforce the concept that text carries meaning.

They were confused when the mother polar bear growled at a male polar bear. They figured the male polar bear was the father of the two cubs. I explained to them that not all polar bears belong to the same family. They asked where his family was, and I simply told them that the book only tells us that he “moved on”.

The read aloud led into an activity that I had set up for them to engage in in their small groups during center time. I put white bulletin board paper out for them to practice “cleaning their fur in the snow” the way the polar bear cubs did in the book (the cubs roll around in the snow to clean and dry their fur). This brief and playful activity ended, and they followed up with an open-ended activity. This activity involved a sheet of blank white paper and crayons. They were instructed to draw a picture of themselves taking care of someone special to them. Many of them have younger siblings, so I wasn't surprised to see that many of them showed themselves taking care of younger sisters and brothers. Two of them drew themselves taking care of polar bear cubs, and a few drew themselves taking care of another friend. The activities were related to the non-fiction read aloud and followed their interests. While the read aloud was a little too long for my students, the content was good and the activities were a great way for them to absorb the information and apply it to their own lives. ( )

Ice Bears is about Polar Bears in their natural habitat. In the story we get to follow the life of a mama bear and her two cubs. We watch the mama bear struggle, get food for her cubs, and also show them how to be strong bears. The mama bear showed her cubs how to survive in such a harsh climate. I thought the illustrations were beautiful. This story would be great for a middle school class. Ice Bears was very informative. ( )

Ice bears is about a polar bear family made up of a mamma bear and her two cub bears. Throughout their journey to survive, she teaches them necessary hunting skills such as finding seals to eat and bulking up for the winter time.

This book was sad as much as it was informational. I've always known that Polar Bears are becoming endangered because of global warming and the fossil fuels warming up the earth, but I didn't know the extremes of it. This book is great to learn what an average mother polar bear and her cubs might go through in a year barely surviving.
The book is about a mother polar bear who gives birth to two polar bear cubs. When they come out of the mothers winter den they are immediately on the search for food. Throughout the whole book the weather is warming up, even at 20 degrees it's too hot for the polar bears. The bears are constantly looking for food and the cubs are always learning new life skills from their mother. At the end of the book the author describes them as being so skinny you can see their bones because the ice has melted and they haven't been able to eat as much seal as they should. Winter comes again and they go on the frozen water as soon as it freezes and then start the process all over again of re-building a winter den to hibernate. ( )