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Synopsis
AN IMPOSSIBLY CUDDLY BABY POLAR BEAR
travels from one magical place to another. “Hush baby polar bear. Sleep in the snow, and dream of the places where sleeping bears go.” Readers follow a baby snow-white plush polar bear that has been brought to life by his owner’s imagination from the back of a whale with the sea spray surrounding, to a land of tall grass where butterflies fl oat by up into the sky itself…and happily right back through the window into the loving arms of his owner asleep in bed. Mack’s lush and lovable illustrations suit the lulling, rhyming text to make a perfect bedtime book sure to leave readers and listeners with warm and fuzzy feelings read after read.
Publishers Weekly
In his first solo outing, Mack (illustrator of the Bunnicula series) sends an eager-looking polar bear on a series of dreamtime adventures: "Swim through a waterfall./ Splash in a stream./ Paddle past rainbows/ that glisten and gleam." Big, rounded shapes and pastel-tinted spreads encourage calm, while rhythmic verses describe action. The polar bear looks like a real cub; the ending reveals him (her) as a stuffed animal snuggled in the arms of the girl who, presumably, is the narrator. She's right behind the polar bear in every spread, watching over him; in Mack's cheerful, fuzzy acrylic paintings, they travel across the ocean, through a rain forest, a desert, and up into the sky before ending safely in bed. "Then look right beside you,/ and that's where I'll be," she promises the bear. Giving the child character the speaking rather than the listening part neatly reverses lullaby convention. Ages 2-6. (Nov.)
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