Children's Books
Have a Good Day
‘Polar Bear Morning,’ by Lauren Thompson, and More
From “Polar Bear Morning”
By PAMELA PAUL
A new year, a new day. For very young children, there really isn’t much
difference. Each morning seems to bring a whirlwind of emotion and
possibility, hope and disappointment. And it takes a good long while to
get to bedtime. Three new picture books honor the boundaries, as so many
picture books do, of the 24-hour lifetimes of young children.
POLAR BEAR MORNING
By Lauren Thompson
Illustrated by Stephen Savage
32 pp. Scholastic Press. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 5)
CHU’S DAY
By Neil Gaiman
Illustrated by Adam Rex
32 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
MY FIRST DAY
By Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
Illustrated by Steve Jenkins
32 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
Related
Times Topic: Children's Books Reviews
From “Chu’s Day”
From “My First Day”
“Polar Bear Morning” is a sequel of sorts to the previous collaboration
between Lauren Thompson (“The Forgiveness Garden,” “The Christmas
Magic”) and Stephen Savage (“Where’s Walrus?,” “Little Tug”). Their
previous effort, “Polar Bear Night,” was a bedtime story about a cub
wandering outside at night, observing his sleeping neighbors and a star
shower before taking to bed himself. This new book likewise features the
pure simplicity of Savage’s near-monochromatic linocut illustrations,
beginning with the icy blues of early dawn before bursting into the
warmer brights of polar sunshine. And “Polar Bear Morning,” like its
predecessor, is a real charmer.
Just as “Night” captivated with its hushed solemnity, so “Morning”
captures the excitement of daybreak — the need to “clamber” out of bed,
scamper into the “sparkling snow” and gleefully tumble down a little
hill. Thompson’s text is a concise approximation of preschool
vernacular, though lighted by poetry. The words, which tell a modest
story of burgeoning friendship and two bears swept along by childhood
exploration, join in buoyant harmony with Savage’s soft lines and gentle
forms. The image of the two new friends diving side by side, eyes
blissfully closed, as they leap into the polar sea perfectly
encapsulates the bliss of the young at play.
In Neil Gaiman’s “Chu’s Day,” a very different bear, this time a panda,
begins his day on a foreboding note. “When Chu sneezed, bad things
happened,” the first page tells us. Can a popular YouTube video motif
inspire a picture book? Quite possibly, though Gaiman doesn’t explicitly
identify his source material.
But as soon as Chu and his mother enter a musty, dusty library, we know
panda sneezes are in order. The hows and whens and whys provide the
substance of this slight tale, which is enriched primarily by the sly
humor in Adam Rex’s deeply hued oil paintings. At the Moby Diner, for
example, a whale plays short order chef to an octopus, a monkey and a
turtle, and a kangaroo carelessly wields a pepper grinder. Uh oh.
“Are you going to sneeze?” Chu’s father asks. It becomes a refrain. To which Chu replies, “Aah, Aaaah, Aaaaah — no.”
You can bet that when Chu finally does sneeze, it comes at an unexpected
and inopportune moment — and shows Gaiman’s keen understanding of a
5-year-old’s comedic sensibility. “Chu’s Day” is the first in a planned
series of three about Chu. (Time to Google “panda yawning”?)
Steve Jenkins and Robin Page have already done yawning in one of their
many collaborations, “Time to Sleep.” That book and a companion, “Time
to Eat,” provide the rough format for the smart, informative and
accessible “My First Day,” as the team offers a glimpse into the very
first day of newborn animals, whether a sifaka, a capybara or a
California sea lion. (As usual, the two venture far from the expected
menagerie, though they are careful to include favorites like tigers and
penguins.)
Jenkins’s masterly paper collages achieve their usual high standards of
zoological accuracy and beauty. The text is shrewdly written in the
first-person voice of each baby animal, mingling personality with
scientific fact. The baby blue wildebeest notes, “On my first day, I
trotted along with my mother. My herd was on the move, and I had to keep
up!” The voices give expression to the ideas and emotions of human
children while also being true to the animals in question. The barking
between a baby sea lion and his mother, for example, assures the baby
that “I won’t get lost among the other sea lion pups.”
The analogies with a young child’s physical achievement and independence
are clear, and inspiring. “On my first day, I raced to the water,” a
baby leatherback turtle boasts. “I landed in a heap,” the baby giraffe
admits. “But I wasn’t hurt, and before long I was taking my first
steps.”
Children will likewise respond to the warm relationship between parent
and offspring. “I clung to her fur as she slept,” a golden snub-nosed
monkey says of his large, orange-furred mother. The story ends, sweetly,
with a polar bear who practically purrs, “I curled up in a cozy den
beneath the snow. I was safe and warm beside my mother.” The full spread
of his silhouette nestled against hers is one of pure filial joy. What a
fine way to start, or end, the day.