Going with the Floe! Sea Bear: A Journey for Survival by Lindsay Moore

Polar bears are patient beasts,
as patient as glaciers.

A female polar bear rides the currents bearing a large chunk of ice toward the Arctic coast. For her, this journey is no pleasure trip. She has to survive as the ice mass melts into an shrinking ice floe. Her journey is not just for herself, but for her unborn cubs, who need to be born in a den on land. When the floe melts from under her, she knows what she has to do.

I am a sea bear... meant to paddle.
I swim with narwhals...
and glide under whales...

The second night the waves grow in height and the wind in wildness.

There's nothing left to do but swim.

And swim she does, finally pulling herself onto shore after three days of swimming. But spring melt means summer is coming. Summer is a lean season for polar bears, while the seals grow fat at sea, and the mother bear tries to feed her fast growing cubs, knowing that summer always ends soon in the Arctic, and she must teach them the ancient ways of patience.

Lindsay Moore's brand-new Sea Bear: A Journey for Survival (Greenwillow Books, 2019) is a lovely, lyrical and hopeful look at the dilemma of Arctic animals caught in a food web that is threatened by changing climate. In a sweetly-told nonfiction picture book, Moore's beautifully layered blue-green multiple media--watercolor, colored pencil, crayon, and ink--are superbly executed, and the book's design is perfect for its picturesque subject. The author also includes a useful appendix for young nature science lovers.