Happy Polar Bear Swim Day!
It’s the first official day of the year. And for some people, it’s a day to plunge into freezing water. Is it the challenge to dare something outrageous? Is it the sense of coming clean with a fresh start? Is it a deep love of polar bears? I don’t know about you, but I’ll be celebrating Polar Bear Swim Day in the comfort of my warm home reading. Here are a few good polar bear books to get you started.
Polar Bear, Shrinking Ice written by Stephen Person (2011)
This non-fiction look at polar bears is recorded by photographs of these majestic creatures. This is a story of BJ Kirschhoffer’s study of polar bears in Churchill, Canada, the polar bear capital of the world. He worked with biologist to learn more about polar bears and how they survive in the arctic. Their scientific name is ursus maritimus, which means ‘sea bear’. Polar bears don’t live in the sea, but they do live on frozen sections of the ocean known as sea ice. They hunt in the sea and can swim up to 6 miles per hour underwater and travel as far as 60 miles without stopping. Polar bears need the ice floes to survive because they only find their food in the water. Climate changes on earth have affected the polar bears by shrinking the amount of sea ice available for hunting ground, leaving many polar bears hungry and more likely to hunt in human garbage dumps or die in the water trying to swim greater distances than possible to the next sea ice mass.
Polar Bear Night written by Lauren Thompson and illustrated by Stephen Savage (2004)
A beautifully written and illustrated look at one small polar bear cub as he awakens and travels through the cold night to the top of a mountain. He passes the sleeping seals, whales, and walrus with only the moon for company. Suddenly the light of a star shower wakes the other animals too. The little cub gets tired and follows the path back to his den and his warm mother’s side.
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More library books on hold. Come back soon and check them them out!
Juliana Lee 
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