COLD PAWS, WARM HEART

A goopy sentimental tale, ostensibly about friendship, but mostly just strange. Cold Paws is a polar bear who is cold and lonely. Polar bear? Cold? Hmmm. He plays a flute to keep himself company, and the sound of the flute draws a little girl named Hannah to him. She gives him her scarf and later brings him hot chocolate and a hug. “Now that he had a friend, Cold Paws didn’t feel cold anymore.” Hannah wears vaguely Scandinavian garb but this clearly takes place in some otherwhere of talking bears and children who wander alone through forests, plains and icebergs. It’s pretty clunky, but the watercolor, ink and pastel pictures fill the pages attractively, and some might find it hard to resist a bear in a red-and-yellow scarf. (Picture book. 4-7)