Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

Bill Martin’s playful story combining animals, colours and sounds, beautifully illustrated by Eric Carle, now appears in a chunky board-book format. A simple rhythmic text introduces the reader to a menagerie of wild animals from a roaring lion to a fluting flamingo and a trumpeting elephant.

Author Biography Eric Carle is an internationally bestselling and award winning author and illustrator of books for very young children. He was born in New York, but spent his early life in Germany. He returned to the States in his early twenties and worked as a graphic designer for the New York Times. He went on to be the art director of an advertising agency before he began writing and illustrating children’s books. Eric lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Barbara. The Carles opened The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Massachusetts in 2002. Bill Martin Jr, a former elementary school principal, and then teacher, writer and poet, held a doctoral degree in childhood education. His many books, among them bestselling classics Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? are testament to his ability to speak directly to children. Born and raised in Kansas, Bill Martin Jr spent the last eleven years of his life in Texas, where he died in 2004.

Author Biography

Bill Martin Jr (Author) Bill Martin Jr was an American educator, publishing executive, and author of more than 300 children’s books including The Sounds of Mystery, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (co-authored with John Archambault), and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? The Bill Martin Jr. Award, which is the Kansas state award for best children’s picture book, was established in his honor in 1996.

Eric Carle (Author, Illustrator) Eric Carle is acclaimed and beloved as the creator of brilliantly illustrated and innovatively designed picture books for very young children. His best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has been translated into 70 languages and sold over 55 million copies. Carle illustrated more than seventy books, many best sellers, most of which he also wrote, and more than 170 million copies of his books have sold around the world. In 2003, Carle received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (now called the Children’s Literature Legacy Award) for lifetime achievement in children’s literature. In 2002, Eric and his wife, Barbara, cofounded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art (www.carlemuseum.org) in Amherst, Massachusetts, a 40,000-square-foot space dedicated to the celebration of picture books and picture book illustrations from around the world, underscoring the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of picture books and their art form. Eric Carle passed away in May 2021 at the age of 91. His work remains an important influence on artists and illustrators at work today. www.eric-carle.com