Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

This has always been one of my favorite books for young children. I love the way the book flows; you can read it in the same rhythm the whole time from page to page. The repetition of each animal shows the importance of their sound, and what they hear. The repetition and rhythm make it an entertaining read for young children. I know as a child, I always really enjoyed the illustrations. Each animal is very big and takes up almost all of the 2 pages it spreads across. They animals are also interestingly shaded with color, which I really liked as well. This book is great for children who are learning animal sounds. My favorite part of the book is the last page. The last page shows a bunch of school age children dressed up as the animals show more in the book. All the children are of different race, which relates to the diversity of all of the different animals in the book. show less

This book follows a whole host of zoo animals and asks them what they hear as they hear one another. Finally we get to a zookeeper, who hears a whole pack of children pretending to be various animals. They're dressed in the animal costumes, and I almost wonder if there were never really any zoo animals, only children. This would easily translate into a preschool play.

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? By Bill Martin Jr/Eric Carle is a rhythmic picture book perfect for young children. The story is about several different animals, each making their own sound, which will show kids how to listen and learn. This is a great book for children to learn about different animals besides cats and dogs, and understand what sounds they make. The vibrant illustrations make the book come to life. I only give this book a four out of five star rating because of all of the repetition, it drove me nuts. But, it can help with children's language development.

My storytime kids LOVED this book! It was very interactive, but simple enough to allow enjoyable phrase repetition without losing their attention. A very good read (and a classic for a reason!)

This is a great follow up story to Brown Bear, Brown Bear. In this book, we get to not only see beautiful illustrations of animals in only the way Eric Carle can do them, but also we get to explore the sounds these animals make.
This has been a favorite in my house for a long time. Both of my kids learned these animal sounds very early in their lives. I can't help but smile when I hear the familiar words of this book.
In the classroom, this book would be a great way to teach kids animal sounds. Also, it would be easy for kids to create a book of their own favorite animals and the sounds they make.

A big part of Brown Bear's charm is its surreal combining of animals and colors and the almost Remy Charlip conclusion. By changing colors for sounds the book loses one important visual element. Yes, the book still has Eric Carle's delightful style of illustrations but this time they are too grounded in reality.

A second problem with Polar Bear is the meter. Martin seems to be trying to keep the original sing-song meter of Brown Bear but his choice of animals and sounds gives him much longer words and often times too many syllables to fit into the simplistic meter of Brown Bear thus making Polar Bear hard to read out loud and frustrating to listen to (according to my children).

If you are a fan of Eric Carle's artwork or fans of Bill show more Martin Jr.'s books, then Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? will be a welcome to your personal library. For everyone else there are better board books. show less

Bill Martin's books are phenomenal. To say I use them a lot in storytime would be an understatement. Granted, I don't use them all the time.....but still.

"Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear" is all about the sounds animals make. "Snarl," "hiss," trumpeting", etc. They are harder words to introduce into a child's vocabulary....which is why we should!! And due to the repetition or general flow of the book, children can repeat a lot of the phrases.

The only thing that bugs me is not the accurate representation of the animals. I get bugged by a pink walrus....but that is just me.