Out on the Ice in the Middle of the Bay

One morning, when I lived in Canada's Arctic, my family got up to get ready for school -- just as we did every morning. Only that morning, a circle of people was staring down at the snow in front of our house.

What do you suppose they were looking at? Two sets of polar bear tracks. At six o'clock that morning, while I was still asleep (though maybe dreaming of bears), a mother polar bear and her cub walked right past my house and... out on the ice in the middle of the bay.

When I saw those people staring at the bears' tracks in the snow, my writer's mind asked the writer's question, "What if... ?": What if I had got up early and gone out for a jog and... ? What if a little girl named Leah wandered away from her house and... ? What if a young polar bear wandered away from his mother? What if the girl's father... ? What if the cub's mother... ?

My young son and I went out to our front yard that morning. We leaned down and put our hands in the huge polar bear tracks in the snow. I wondered then what story was written in those tracks. And that story was my picture book, OUT ON THE ICE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BAY.