Waiting for Ice
A polar bear cub, barely 10 months old, gets separated from her mother on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. Because the ice has melted during the very long summer, the cub is trapped, left struggling to survive with other hungry polar bears, until at last a blizzard comes, the pack ice returns, and the cub can travel on the ice floes to hunt for food and find her mother. Based on a true story reported by a scientist who observed the cub on Wrangel, the spare, poetic free verse about the land that is “harsh, hungry––and home” is illustrated with dramatic double-page watercolor-and-pencil artwork in arctic blues and whites that show the desperate cub scavenging and searching, until finally she is freed. The immediate survival struggle will hook children, while young conservationists will want to find out more, and well-organized back matter spells out the crucial messages about the threats of global warming. Grades 1-3. --Hazel Rochman