Sea Bear a Journey for Survival

Summary: Sea Bear a Journey for Survival is a Non-Fiction children's book intended for children in Kindergarten through third or fifth grade. This story is about a lonely polar bear who travels across the sea ice in pursuit of food. As the ice melts and food becomes scarce, she is forced to swim for days. Finally, rough and exhausted, she finds shelter on land, where she gives birth to cubs and waits for the sea to freeze again. This story is about perseverance, family, nature, and climate change that will resonate with readers of all ages.

Art Style: Lindsay Moore uses such beautiful colors, with a palette that gives equal glory to such natural wonders as starry night skies, ocean depths, and the aurora borealis. Lindsay Moore’s background in the book uses a scientific illustration, which serves the book well. For example, the bear staring directly at readers early on has glistening eyes and a nose that surely will smudge the opposite page. 

Personal Thoughts: I think this story would/could create the perfect unit study for students to learn about perseverance, family, or climate change. Each page offers readers a new glimpse into the polar bear’s being as she “out-waits seals, storms, and long, sunless winters.” As the seasons change and warmer weather melts the ice, the polar bear journeys for days nearly lost at sea, tired, and seeking land. Simply bursting with teaching possibilities, Moore has given voice to polar bears and in doing so helps young readers understand the beauty of these endangered creatures who lives depend on the sea ice.

Discussion Questions:

What does a polar bear know?

Does the ice melting affect the polar bears and their cubs? If so, how? Why?

How would you feel if you put yourself in their shoes?

Motivational Activities:

Because there are terms that are specific to polar bears and sea ice. I would invite students to be word detectives by paying attention to new words they didn’t know before. I would have them create a class list of new words that the book introduces to them. I will explain to the students to use context clues from the print and the illustrations to determine working definitions of these words. Following this investigation into new words in Sea Bear, encourage students to be word detectives in their own independent reading inviting students to add new words to a class bulletin board or anchor chart.

Another activity that I would use is having the students create their own narrative from the perspective of another animal who has their own journey for survival. I would activate student thinking with the phrase “imagine you are a ___” to get them thinking like the animal they most want to write about. I would Use Sea Bear as a mentor text to show students how they can imagine they are an animal by using language that points to first person narration, particularly “I” and “we”. I would encourage the students to create picture books on their own that tie fact and fiction as Lindsay Moore does to tell their animal’s tale of survival. 

Unfortunately, Sea Bear a Journey for Survival is Lindsay Moore’s only story, but stay tuned, because looking to create more!

Resources:
Moore, L. (2019). Sea bear: A journey for survival. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books, an Imprint of HarperCollins.

Lindsay Moore. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.harpercollins.com/author/132006/lindsay-moore/