A cat imagines what it would be like to be a polar bear and live on the ice.

The Memoirs of a Polar Bear stars three generations of talented writers and performers—who happen to be polar bears The Memoirs of a Polar Bear has in spades what Rivka Galchen hailed in the New Yorker as “Yoko Tawada’s magnificent strangeness”—Tawada is an author like no other. Three generations (grandmother, mother, son) of polar bears are famous as both circus performers and writers in East Germany: they are polar bears who move in human society, stars of the ring and of the literary world. In chapter one, the grandmother matriarch in the Soviet Union accidentally writes a bestselling autobiography. In chapter two, Tosca, her daughter (born in Canada, where her mother had emigrated) moves to the DDR and takes a job in the circus. Her son—the last of their line—is Knut, born in chapter three in a Leipzig zoo but raised by a human keeper in relatively happy circumstances in the Berlin zoo, until his keeper, Matthias, is taken away... Happy or sad, each bear writes a story, enjoying both celebrity and “the intimacy of being alone with my pen.”

The polar bear is the biggest and most powerful of the animals that are able to survive the hostile climate of the Arctic. Cubs are born during the cold dark winter, even though they start out with only a thin coat of fur and weigh a little over one pound. The mothers raise and teach them so they may grow and survive in the wild. Here is information about how polar bears swim and hunt, how they keep warm and dry, and the many other ways they adapt to their environment.

The story of the Black Beauty Ranch in East Texas and of countless animals who have "found their haven at the ranch."--Jacket.

""Lars's adventures incorporate the unexpectedness of life events, the power of experience to help form personal values, and the importance of both friendly help and self-reliance in ways that are gentle enough to avoid overpowering young readers"".--School Library Journal. Full color.

What will you hear when you read this book to a preschool child? Lots of noise Children will chant the rhythmic words. They'll make the sounds the animals make. And they'll pretend to be the zoo animals featured in the book-- look at the last page Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle are two of the most respected names in children's education and children's illustrations. This collaboration, their first since the classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (published more than thirty years ago and still a best-seller) shows two masters at their best. A Redbook Children's Picture Book Award winner The rollicking companion to Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

A cat imagines what it would be like to be a spider, spinning, eating, and playing in the garden.