The Greatest Science Books of 2016
7.THE POLAR BEAR
“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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