Non-Fiction Monday: The Polar Bear Scientists by Peter Lourie
Scientist in the Field series. 80 p. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January, 2012. 978-0-547-28305-0.
Oh! How I love this series. I love it so much, the seventh grade science teacher and I built a unit around it four years ago. This latest entry finds Peter Lourie (Arctic Thaw, Whaling Season) back in the Arctic, this time, he's in Barrows, Alaska, interviewing the scientists and staff at The Polar Bear Research Project. Just as in Arctic Thaw, the loss of Polar ice is impacting the arctic ecosystem. In Alaska, it's the polar bear, which is now on the endangered list.
Lourie accompanied the team on an expedition to find, tranquilize, measure, weigh and tag polar bears during a two week period. All the data that was collected was added to a database going back forty years. Each page in this beautifully designed book contains a variety of crisp, stuningly mind-blowing full-color photographs and/ or maps. The photographs are so brilliant that they distract from the conversational text, which is fascinating on its own. My suggestion is to read the book three times. First, read the photos, next try to concentrate solely on the text, finally read both. Each time through, I noticed something new.
Interspersed throughout are "conversations" with Dr. Steven Amstrup about the impact of global warming on these magnificent creatures. The book concludes with a two page glossary, a page called, "Polar Bear Field Guide," which contains a bulleted list of important facts, a page containing suggested books for older and younger readers and websites, a page of sources and, finally, an index.
Non-fiction Monday is hosted this week by True Tales & Cherry on Top.
