Ice Bear

Lyrical and full of wonder, this magical portrait of the polar bear reads more like a poem or picture book. Yet it is full of information, for Davies is a gifted author of non-fiction, a zoologist who wears her learning lightly, with a strong voice that speaks directly to the reader. She describes the Arctic land of ice and snow where the white bear lives, hunting, breeding and journeying in the frozen landscape. Blythe’s atmospheric illustrations depict the bear in all its different guises – as a fierce hunter stalking its prey, a tender mother nurturing her young, a gentle playmate (‘giants flowing in the whiteness, tumbling, beautiful as snowflakes …’), a lone hunter in the winter ‘when the sun never rises and the stars of the Great Bear sparkle in the darkness’. Sharing this frozen world are the Inuit people, who have watched and learned much from the bear they call Nanuk – how to build a house to hide from blizzards, how to watch patiently to hunt for seals and ‘how to live in starlit day and sunlit night’. An exceptionally beautiful book and one that begs to be read aloud – a rare thing in non-fiction.