POLAR BEAR

A first introduction to the largest living land-dwelling carnivore.

Except for one dramatic view of a nanurluk, or mythical giant bear (paired only with a perfunctory description), the bears in Christopher’s low-contrast Arctic land- and seascapes adopt majestic but static poses. In his similarly straightforward, exclamation-mark–laden commentary, Flaherty not only fails to follow up with specifics about an observation that bears are “surprisingly fast,” but notes amid a sparse handful of basic facts that they “wait silently at these breathing holes for hours waiting for a seal to appear.” Likewise, in the co-published Narwhal, Hwei Lim furnishes only anemic scenes of the small whales posed tidily next to prey and predators, and along with averring that “males have a long tusk that looks like a long horn,” writer Solomon Awa just leaves readers hanging after “People are still studying the narwhal to find out all the things its tusk can do!” The latter author and illustrator also skip any reference to narwhals in Inuit traditional culture.

Uninspired outings.