A girl falls asleep in her garden and dreams of circuses among the clouds, enormous flowers and a gentle polar bear on the ice. The bear wants to see the Northern Lights but needs someone to read his magical map while he rows. They travel together, meet a narwhal and watch the glowing sky. When the girl wakes, tiny snowflakes remain on her eyelashes.

The polar bear has built a boat to watch the Northern Lights, but he cannot row and study the map at the same time. The girl can read the map while he steers them across the icy water. Their different jobs make the journey possible. This is a practical way to discuss helping: sometimes contributing one small skill is exactly what another person needs.

The map shows unfamiliar places, undersea creatures, ice caves, whale trails and lines marking Arctic storms. Most unusually, its features move and change under the girl’s fingers. Children can notice the difference between an ordinary map, which records places, and this imaginative map, which seems alive. Invite them to invent one new feature that might appear when the girl touches it.

The Northern Lights, also called the aurora borealis, are real shifting lights that sometimes appear in the sky at high northern latitudes. They occur when energetic particles associated with the Sun interact with gases high in Earth’s atmosphere. In this story, the lights are the beautiful destination of a dream journey. You can explore the science with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s aurora explanation.

Polar bears, narwhals, walruses, glaciers and floating ice are real, even though the friendly, talking bear and living map are imaginary. The illustrated map also names locations such as Mount Erebus and Lake Vostok, which should not all be treated as locations in the Arctic. For example, NASA identifies Mount Erebus as an Antarctic volcano. Use a globe or atlas to compare the real poles with the dream journey.

When the girl wakes in her flower-filled garden, she finds tiny snowflakes on her eyelashes. The story does not explain exactly how they arrived. Children may enjoy wondering whether the dream touched the real world, or whether the ending simply keeps the magic alive. Ask what other small clue might make them wonder if an imaginary adventure really happened.

The story has a gentle pace, a warm friendship and a quiet ending beneath the stars, so it may suit a calm bedtime routine. Its dream scenes contain unusual places but no frightening conflict. Young children may particularly enjoy the bear’s comforting hug. You could read the pages slowly and pause at the Northern Lights illustration before turning to the final snowflake surprise.

The journey introduces words such as floes, glacier, narwhal, walruses, terns and isobars. Each can be explained briefly as the corresponding picture appears, rather than turning bedtime into a long vocabulary lesson. For example, a floe is a sheet of floating ice, while isobars are lines on a weather map. Invite children to spot the word’s meaning in the illustration.

The girl and the bear share a clear goal but have different roles: one reads the map and the other rows. Children can identify what each character contributes and how they might feel when they finally see the lights together. A partner activity using a simple treasure map can extend the idea. The Storyberries Feelings collection offers more prompts for naming emotions.

Children might draw a map with places that change, paint the Northern Lights with sweeping colours, or invent an animal companion for another dream journey. A second option is to draw the girl’s garden before and after her dream, including the surprise snowflakes. For more imaginative prompts, browse Storyberries’ Imagination stories and compare how other tales use make-believe.