Bears of the Ice – The Quest of the Cubs

Kathryn Lasky's The Quest of the Cubs is an animal adventure for 8 year olds about two polar bear cubs who have a few days to learn to hunt before they lose their mother.

What happens

Their mother is Svenna. The cubs are twins, not yet a year old, and they don't have names yet. In this part of the ice, cubs aren't named until their second season, because so many of them don't get that far. So they're called First and Second.

First is the careful one. He can sometimes pick up what another creature is thinking, though he can't explain how he does it. Second is the one who digs the ice slide steeper and faster, and who will take on a bear ten times her size over a stolen seal. She does take one on, too.

Two huge bears come to the den. They're called Roguers and they've come to collect the cubs for something called the Timekeepers. Svenna offers herself instead. She can read and write, which turns out to be worth more to them than she expected.

So she has a few days to teach two cubs everything they will need, and she can't tell them why.

The world of it is the best part. Bears are named for the eighteen stars of the Great Bear constellation, one star to each clan. There was a council once, at a place called the Den of Forever Frost, and then the sea rose and the clans broke apart and nobody tells the old stories any more. Svenna tells them anyway, in the den, picking lice out of her cubs' fur while they ask about a father they've never met.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This is a dark opening for the age it sits at. Svenna is told plainly that if she runs, the Roguers will murder her in front of her own cubs and take them anyway. A strange bear swats Second hard enough across the ice that her brother thinks she's been knocked senseless. Mothers are being killed and cubs are being stolen, and all of that is the situation on page one rather than a twist further in.

For a child who has already taken to the tougher end of animal stories, that's precisely the appeal. For an eight year old who is still soft about animals in danger, it will be a lot to carry.

What to read next

For a smaller creature in a world that's every bit as unforgiving, try Kenneth Oppel's Silverwing. Shade is the runt of his bat colony, he can't catch a tiger moth to save his life, and the whole colony is about to fly south for the winter.