Knut the Cute: Knut: How One Little Polar Bear Captivated the World by Juliana, Isabella, and Craig Hatkoff

Craig and Isabella Hatkoff, authors of the Owen and Mzee books, which chronicled the adoption of baby hippo Owen by a 130-year-old tortoise named Mzee, have collaborated again, this time with big sister Juliana Hatkoff, to tell a new animal story, this time of an abandoned polar bear newborn named Knut.

Luckily for Knut, he was born one of polar bear twins in the world-renowned Zoo Berlin in 2006. Rejected by his mother, Knut and his twin were removed after five hours from their mother’s enclosure, and zookeepers Thomas Dorflein and Andre Schule placed the tiny cubs in incubators and began bottle feeding them.. When one of the cubs died of a sudden fever after four days, Thomas became the surrogate “mother” of the remaining eisbarbaby. Staying with the cub around the clock, he prepared his formula, fed him when he cried for food every two hours, kept him clean, and stroked and fondled the cub often to simulate a mother bear’s tender care.

For more than three months Thomas lived at the zoo with the baby, whom he and Andre named Knut. Since mother polar bears stay with their babies inside a snow den for three months to shield them from cold and light, Thomas Dorflein had a full-time job as a stand-in eisbar mom. Like all babies, Knut needed touch and sound to stimulate growth and development, and Thomas provided all that, including playing and singing Elvis songs accompanied on his guitar.

“Love Me Tender” is obviously not in the wild polar bear mom’s repertoire of mothering strategies, but what Thomas Dorflein did apparently worked. During that three months of “den” time, Knut started to walk clumsily, had his first solid meal of milk and kitten chow, and began to play enthusiastically, pouncing on his plush polar bear and wrestling with his favorite blanket. One night he even climbed out of his sleeping box and bounced on Thomas’ head to wake him up. As Knut moved into a larger area, Thomas taught him to play tug-of-war with his blanket and even gave him his first swimming lesson, diving in first and coaxing Knut to jump in and swim with him in his frigid pool.

By the time Knut made his first brief public appearance, he was Germany’s media superstar and was fast becoming a world-wide celebrity. From the daily reports on his progress, people learned about polar bear growth and development and many were made aware of the threat to these arctic animals’ survival posed by global climate change and loss of habitat. A beautiful animal, incredibly photogenic (he’s even cuter than his toy polar bear!), Knut soon became the polar bear poster child for his threatened species.

How One Little Polar Bear Captivated The World (Knut) is a book which is instantly appealing to young readers. The photos of baby Knut are irresistible, but the text also provides a great deal of information about the nurture of young bears which readers will absorb without realizing that they are learning. An appendix includes three sections: “More about Polar Bears...,” which describes the physical characteristics, diet, family life, and habitat of this species, “The Biggest Threat to Polar Bears,” which describes in text and a polar map the reduction in the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice since 1979, and “How You Can Help,” which provides a list of everyday actions children can take to slow climate change. A link to Knut’s own web site is listed, along with several print sources for students doing research.

Video of Knut's debut before the mainstream media can be seen here.