The Best Science Books of 2016
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7.
THE POLAR BEAR
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“In wildness is the preservation of the
world,” Thoreau wrote 150 years ago in
his ode
to the spirit of sauntering. But in a world
increasingly unwild, where we are in touch with nature only occasionally and
only in fragments, how are we to nurture the preservation of our Pale Blue Dot?
That’s what London-based illustrator and
Sendak Fellow Jenni Desmond explores in The
Polar Bear — the follow-up to Desmond’s serenade to the
science and life of Earth’s largest-hearted creature, The
Blue Whale, which was among the best
science books of 2015.
The story follows a little girl who, in a
delightful meta-touch, pulls this very book off the bookshelf and begins
learning about the strange and wonderful world of the polar bear, its life, and
the science behind it — its love of solitude, the black skin that hides beneath its yellowish-white
fur, the built-in sunglasses protecting its eyes from the harsh Arctic light,
why it evolved to have an unusually long neck and slightly inward paws, how it
maintains the same temperature as us despite living in such extreme cold, why
it doesn’t hibernate.
Beyond its sheer loveliness, the book is
suddenly imbued with a new layer of urgency. At a time when we can no longer
count on politicians to protect the planet and educate the next generations
about preserving it, the task falls on solely on parents and educators.
Desmond’s wonderful project alleviates that task by offering a warm, empathic
invitation to care about, which is the gateway to caring for, one of the
creatures most vulnerable to our changing climate and most needful of our
protection.
Brain Pickings
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