The Woman and Her Bear Cub

In this traditional Inuit story, a mother and daughter stumble upon a lost polar bear cub and bring it home to live with their family. The daughter becomes especially close with the cub and names him Brother. Most of the book focuses on the everyday moments of this Inuit family’s life and the relationship that grows between the little girl and the polar bear. In this way, the book would be better titled “The Girl and her Bear Cub”. Through the simple illustrations, readers can see the girl and polar bear observing the night sky, searching for mussels in the ice, eating seal broth, playing hide-and-seek, and the bear’s catching food for the little girl and her mother. The The Woman and her Bear Cub has age-appropriate vocabulary and a pronunciation guide and a definition for the Inuit term qarmaq (a sod house) as end matter.

The images are simple and, colour-wise, are made up of mostly blues, whites and browns as a way to show the coolness of the Arctic terrain and this family’s way of life. The pictures serve to show the growth of the polar bear and the girl, as well as how their relationship and bond grow over time. At the end of the book, there is a simple image of the mother bear nuzzling and embracing her cub as they are reunited. This posture is mimicked on the opposite page as the little girl embraces her mother with the realization that the polar bear must leave them.

Though the ending of The Woman and her Bear Cub (“They were sad to see him go, but happy that he has found his mother bear.”) felt abrupt, it could can open a discussion with young readers about how we can often feel two things at once. In this case, the mother and daughter feel both happy and sad at the same time to see their friend, the polar bear, leave them.