Adorable Predators: Children’s Responses to the Polar Bear in a Nonfiction Picturebook

Polar bears have become frequent subjects of biology, conservation, and climate science, and continue to evolve in the popular imagination as both fiercely powerful and utterly adorable. This paper explores children’s verbal responses to representations of the polar bear in Ice Bear, a nonfiction picturebook by writer Nicola Davies and illustrator Gary Blythe (Ice Bear, Walker Books, London, 2005). Discussion between four children aged 9–11 reveals their responses to the ways in which this picturebook conveys the characteristics, behaviours, instincts, and sensibilities of the polar bear, thus illuminating the eco-pedagogical affordances of wild animals in visual texts. To understand how these children navigate the ostensibly incompatible ideas of the polar bear as both an adorable creature and a fierce predator, my study is informed by Joshua Paul Dale’s theories of how cuteness can provoke complex aesthetic and affective responses. Through applying the lens of posthuman animal studies to children’s literature, I aim to demonstrate how cute aesthetics are applied in the context of this nonfiction picturebook and to show how such deployment of cuteness can elicit connection between child readers and the polar bear. Overall, I consider the extent to which Ice Bear can galvanise thought around what the future may hold for wild animals as casualties of environmental decline.