The Snow Bear

by Holly Webb, Simon Mendez (Illustrator)

Overview

Sara loves to listen to Grandpa’s stories of his adventures in the Canadian Arctic when he was a boy. As the snow begins to fall, she builds a snow bear just like the one in Grandpa’s story. In the middle of the night, Sara wakes up and sets out on an enchanted journey through a world of ice and meets a special polar bear cub who befriends her. But will she ever find her way back home?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781680101683
Publisher:	Tiger Tales.
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Series:	Winter Journeys
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Holly Webb started out as a children's book editor and wrote her first series for the publisher she worked for. She has been writing ever since, with over one hundred books to her name. Holly lives in Berkshire, with her husband and three children. Holly's pet cats are always nosing around when she is trying to type on her laptop.

Editorial Reviews

2019-08-12
After hearing her grandfather's stories of finding a polar bear cub while living with an Inuit family in the Canadian Arctic, a little girl dreams her own wintry adventure.

Sara's parents have skipped the family's annual Christmastime visit to Grandpa this year, staying at home as they await the birth of her baby brother and sending her alone. Sara loves visiting Grandpa but misses her parents, especially now that a major snowfall threatens to keep them isolated up north over the holiday. Grandpa, writing a book on Inuit folktales, entertains her with accounts of his own childhood, when he accompanied his father—then studying the Inuit people—to the Canadian Arctic, where Grandpa and Alignak, an Inuit boy, rescued a polar bear cub. Sara builds a snow bear and coaxes Grandpa into building a small igloo, where she snuggles into a sleeping bag and, listening to more stories, dreams. Originally published in 2012, the story—especially in its generic portrait of Inuit culture—feels stale, the characters bland. As recollected in Grandpa's childhood memories and Sara's dream, the Inuit are familiar, pre-industrial tropes—exotic sources of folktales and artifacts. (An endnote oddly describes Nunavut, Canada's vast Inuit territory, as a "settlement.") Vacillating between realism and fantasy, the plot never kicks into gear. Sara and Grandpa present white. Homey illustrations add warmth to an otherwise chilly read.

Trite and plodding. (author's notes) (Fiction. 6-10)

Kirkus Reviews