It Takes Two: Polar Bear Morning by Lauren Thompson

THE LITTLE POLAR BEAR HEARS THE SEAGULLS CALLING.

What Little Polar Bear sees is a new morning, the sky still a midnight blue against the white snow. Then the golden sun shows over the ice and with the promise of new adventures out there, he sets forth to explore his new world. As the sky shows pink with the sunrise, he plays in the snow.

And then he sees something intriguing at the top of a snowdrift. It seems to have a face. And it is looking at him with great interest.

It is another baby bear, and the two of them begin to learn to play together, tumbling down the snow hill and finally taking the plunge into the blue waters to swim deep down and then up into the light, where they climb up upon a friendly ice floe to rest.

It's a simple little story, illuminated by the artist Stephen Savage in a striking palette of blue, black, and white in eye-cating block prints. Lauren Thompson's latest, Polar Bear Morning (Scholastic, 2013) is a companion piece to the earlier heralded Polar Bear Night (New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books (Awards)), reminding us that one is the loneliest number, but two can do it all.