Polar opposites

It's hard to find cartoons to fit the four-to-10 age group's understanding. The Little Polar Bear is one, however. It's the best bet this Easter. The animal life in it is simple and simply drawn - more outlines than solids - and so is the relationship between the endlessly peripatetic little ice-cap bear and the walrus pup who become friends against all the laws of life in the wild.

When Lars invites Robby home

for supper, the elders express concern lest the guest finish up as the meal. Instead, peace between walruses and bears is brokered by a pushy penguin who persuades one to do the fishing for the other. The lesson is about making friends with folk who are "different".

Manically depressed lemmings forever burying their heads in the snow, gullible seagulls and a grumble of big, nasty bears populate a winterscape that offers a kid bear opportunities to go snowboarding and swim beneath the glaciers.

It is noticeably bloodless: the prey-factor is very low, any fish caught suffer in silence. Drama is provided by Lars drifting off on a loose floe to the tropics - switch to fruit-salad colours, a happy hippo and a chameleon that empathetically turns white out of concern for the stranded cub who gets home by eagle airlift and whale piggyback.

The threat to the environment is evoked by the invasion of a monster fishing vessel whose greedy steel jaws open and close on ocean life and leave the seas poorer.

It's a German-made cartoon from a Dutch writer's stories directed and written by a Belgian animator, Piet De Rycker. It speaks American; but then what coalition doesn't these days?

The Little Polar Bear
Cert: U