The Last Bear

The Last Bear by Hannah Gold is an Arctic adventure for 8 year olds about a girl who has always got on better with animals than with people.

What happens

April's dad researches the weather. He works odd hours and shuts himself in his study with books so dusty they make your eyes hurt.

When he's offered six months at a research station in the Arctic, April can hardly believe it. Six whole months on an island, with her dad, and no school.

Her granny is horrified. What about the cold? The waves? The walruses she's seen on a David Attenborough documentary?

Everyone says the same thing anyway. There haven't been bears up there for years. April is told to RUN if she sees one, just in case.

Then they arrive. April unpacks and starts planning trips to the mountains. She turns round to tell her dad and he's already gone into the other cabin and shut the door.

That's the bit that gets you. She isn't in any danger. She's just on her own again, on the smallest dot on the map, which she rather likes because people tend to overlook her too.

You get to know April through very small things. She names a fox in her back garden Braveheart. She feeds a seagull out of her hand on the ship over. When a boy called Tör calls it a trick, she taps her chest and tells him it's about listening.

So when she does finally meet a polar bear, hungry and nowhere near the rest of his kind, you already know what she's going to do about it.

It's worth knowing that April's mum died when April was four. That's set up in the first chapter rather than something that happens later on. Her dad is still quietly sad about it and April can barely remember her.

A child who has lost someone might find the hot chocolate memories quite close to home. For another reader those same bits are the warmest part of the whole thing.

There's real worry about the melting Arctic in here too. April already knows about the ice caps and it makes her feel angry and useless at the same time.

What to read next

If your reader takes to her, Finding Bear carries the story on. April is back at school being called Bear Girl by her class, with a photograph in her pocket she can't stop looking at.