In the meantime here’s the most beautiful book we discovered last week on our Librarithon :

Here’s the book that got us itching to get back in the garden with the arrival of spring:

And here’s the book that not only made us laugh out loud, but also made our stomachs churn…

Each of these books is brilliant. Astonishingly beautiful, interesting, funny, disgusting, breathtaking – a great mix! – and you’ll be doing yourself a favour to track down a copy of any of them for your own families

Photo: daita

A tale exploring love and longing and managing anxiety when a child is separated from a parent (and thus would pair marvellously with Abel’s Moon, which I reviewed here), Polly and the North Star is a gem, a stunning début. Polly’s father is some sort of conservationist and his work takes him to Alaska, far from his family. He and Polly agree that whenever she looks up and finds the North Star, he too will be looking at it, reaching out to her and saying goodnight.

Polly takes great comfort from the North Star and when she goes to bed she loves to imagine all the animals her father is working with to protect. In her dreams she makes special friends with a polar bear called Snowflake and and snowy owl called Mercury. After counting down the many days, it is finally the day Polly’s father is due to leave Alaska and return home, but for the first time she cannot see the North Star from her window. She knows her father is in trouble and wishes desperately that she could do something to help him.

With the help of her animal friends she battles through a blizzard and finds her father lying in the snow. When she tries to rouse him, it is she herself who is roused from her dreams by her own father – he has returned home safe and sound.

We love this gently told story, but what really stands out about this book are the tremendous illustrations – full of colour and sparkle. Not that there is any glittery printing in this book – it is simply Horner’s technique and materials that make her pictures appear to twinkle. Bright colours are often contrasted with rich, dark blues and almost-blacks and her use of different washes and streaks works wonderfully to capture movement – whether the wind on the Arctic plain, or the snow in the blizzard. Horner’s animals are also fantastic. Although they are drawn with relatively few strokes, their faces are full of warmth and emotion, without becoming cutesy and caricatured. Oh how I’d love one of Horner’s Birthday Portraits!

Taking our cue from Snowflake and the stars shimmering throughout this book we decided to create our own starry night-times with polar bears out and about exploring. First M and J draw polar bear outlines on black paper, filled the outlines with glue and then used cotton wool to give the polar bears their coats.

More glue was liberally dribbled over the paper and then out came a blizzard of silver glitter…

There’s nothing quite like being let loose with glitter to make little people happy!

This was a very simple activity but much enjoyed, which is what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Polly and the North Star: ** (2 stars) or maybe even *** because now I’m looking at the illustrations again I just want to have them up on my wall!

Some music to find the North Star by:

Some other activities we might try, inspired by Polly and the North Star:

What stories about being separated from each other have you and your kids enjoyed or taken comfort from? And what are your favourite star books (just in case I need another excuse to get the glitter out!)?

Once again I’m linking up with stART at A Mommy’s Adventures – I do hope you have the time to head on over there and see what other stories + art families have been up to!

Snow Bear by Piers Harper tells a simple story of growing up. A young polar bear ventures out of his den to investigate the exciting world around him. He has so much fun playing in the snow and then in the water that he loses track of time and finds himself lost. With the help of a friendly reindeer and a young Inuit girl the snow bear is eventually reunited with his mother:

“I found out that there are lots of fun things to do, and lots of exciting places… but being home with you is the very best place of all.”

The story is familiar and comforting, and the illustrations at least in the board book version we have are fun for J as the fur in various animals is picked out and printed with a material which is soft to touch.

I imagine the book has been such a hit with my two girls as there is a reasonable dose of adventure and exploration coupled up with the reassurance that Mum and cuddles will always be there at the end of the day. That said, this is one of those books that just doesn’t do it for me. I read it because the girls love it, but otherwise I would have been happy had it remained buried at the back of the bookcase.

The story isn’t told with any originality, magic or poetry – maybe that’s in some sense why it works – there is nothing offensive or challenging about it. The illustrations are cute but not the sort of images I would want to look at every day for inspiration or solace. I’m glad I have the book as the girls clearly get something from it, but it is not a book I would give as a gift or particularly recommend, but if you found it in the library maybe your kids would enjoy it as much as mine.

All that said, the activity that was inspired from the (many) readings of this book was a lot of fun and definitely one I would recommend you try out!

1. The night before we did this activity I froze water in several different sized containers in our freezer. To some containers I added some food colouring to create coloured blocks of ice, but this seemed to effect the freezing point of the water and several of these blocks were not completely frozen after 24 hours in the freezer.

2. The next day we covered the table with some old towels (and had a couple more to hand in case of accidents) and on to the table I placed a container with some water and blue food colouring to mirror the description given of the polar sea in Snow Bear. We emptied out the frozen blocks of ice from the freezer and added them to the water to create icebergs.

3. We rounded up all the various polar animals we could find in our toy boxes (yes, this meant that polar bears were found next to penguins and we mixed up our arctic and antarctic animals, but this was about playing with imagination, not scientific accuracy ) and let them play havoc on the bergs.

4. With the use of some salt to help stick the various ice cubes and blocks together M made some ice sculptures whilst J had a whale of a time throwing the animals into the water and creating the biggest splashes she could (the towels were very useful at this point!)

Snow Bear: ** (2 stars) if my daughters were voting, * (1 star), if it were only up to me.

Music to go with this activity could include:

Making an icy landscape is something wintry one can do with the kids even if it isn’t snowy outside. Here are some other wintry activities you could try in warmer climes:

Some of the ideas above came from the Yahoo Group Kids Activities – click here if you’d like to to find out more or sign up.

(Almost) finally, there is a short but sweet list of non-fiction books for kids about arctic life available at Open Wide Look Inside, a blog which “is about throwing open the pages of books and using them to motivate and excite kids about learning math, science and social studies.” – definitely worth a visit! And then there’s a great long list of winter snow books at Through The Looking Glass Children’s Book Reviews, where I’ve found quite a few new books I now want to get!

If you’ve got any great polar bear book suggestions, or wintry indoor activities please let us know! Also, here’s your chance to moan about the books you can’t bear but which your children just adore….