Madeleine FloydCritiques

Genre
Picture books for children
Subject
Bears
Children and polar bears
Cold
Friendship
Girls
Loneliness
Music
Polar bear

hardback

" Cold Paws, Warm Heart" is a wonderful story about friendship. This book gives the underlying meaning of "don't judge a book its cover". This story is about a little girl who befriends a polar bear who has no friends. This story is fun for children to use their imagination and put their selves in Hannah's shoes. I really love this story about friendship and would love to read it to my children and students one day in the future.½

Captain, a handsome cat who lived with his people in a house by the river, liked to do all the normal feline things: sleeping (in every place imaginable), washing (in every position imaginable), and eating (every food possible). But he also had some rather unusual habits, including a predilection for stealing out late at night, and taking his sweetheart boating under the stars. Fortunately, this cat-about-town knew how to slip between his two worlds, purring all the while...

I had mixed feelings about Captain's Purr, which started out strong - gorgeous illustrations, that perfectly captured the beauties of the feline form (I loved the washings scenes!) in all its many activities, and a simple but charming text - but then took an unexpected and rather unwelcome detour into fantasy land. The anthropomorphic scenes, in which Captain rows his lady love about, seemed completely unnecessary (couldn't he have visited with her in a suitably catty way?), and took me right out of the story, destroying that warm feeling of seeing things from a feline perspective. I wavered between two and three stars with this one, but in the end, I simply couldn't give artwork this beautiful two stars...

Brrrr! noises can be made for interaction. Large polar bear is cold because he has no friends-when he meets a little girl her friendship warms him up.

A cue book to add to a library collection about polar bears. I found the ending to be very abrupt.

This fantasy picture book is the story of an unlikely friendship between a young girl and and a polar bear. The girl reaches out the the polar bear with kindness, friendship, love, and of course hot cocoa.

Genre: Fantasy
Media: Oil Paint
Age Appropriateness: Primary
This book is about a lonely polar bear. The lonely polar bear finds a silver flute and learns how to play it. This music gets the attention of a girl, Hannah. She sees that the polar bear is cold and gives him her scarf, later she brings him more things and promises to play with him every day. The polar bear is happy now because he has a friend. This book is a good example of a fantasy because it is not realistic. A polar bear could not play the flute, nor would a little girl play with a polar bear.

hardback

Media: watercolor, ink, pastel½