Polar Bear Pals

Nanuq was a polar bear cub who lived in the Arctic, near the top of the world. Everything around him was white: white snow, white ice and white bears.

Polar bears need sea ice. They stand on it to hunt for seals, rest on it after long swims and walk across it to find food.

Every spring, the ice began to melt, and every autumn it froze again. But Nanuq's mother noticed something worrying. "When I was a cub, the ice stayed much longer," she said.

"Why is it melting earlier?" Nanuq asked.

"The whole Earth is getting a little warmer," she said. "People burn fuel in cars and factories, and it makes an invisible blanket of gases around the planet. The blanket traps heat."

Nanuq frowned. "Can we fix it?"

"Bears can't," his mother said. "But people can."

Far away, in a school in a city, a class of students was learning about polar bears. They saw pictures of the melting ice, and they wanted to help.

They started walking and biking to school. They turned off lights they weren't using. They planted trees in the park, because trees soak up some of those gases. They wrote letters asking leaders to use clean energy from the sun and wind.

"It's just one class," said a girl named Aisha. "Will it matter?"

"Every class, every family, every town," said her teacher. "Lots of small choices add up to big changes."

Up in the Arctic, Nanuq snuggled against his mother on the ice, watching the northern lights dance in green ribbons across the sky. Somewhere far away, people were thinking about him. And that gave him hope.

⭐ The End ⭐