Frances Karen

Every parent wants their child to understand that life doesn’t stop when things get hard. Miss Karen, author F.K. Smith, learned that lesson the way most people do: not by choice, but by circumstance. She has lived with Lyme disease for years, cycling through good days and painful ones. And yet, instead of giving in to it, she wrote a children’s book that quietly teaches kids exactly what resilience, compassion, and faith look like in real life. Polar Bear, Solar Bear is that book, and it is one that parents and grandparents should know about. Who Is Miss Karen, and Why Does It Matter? Frances Karen Smith is a retired schoolteacher with 49 years in the classroom. She holds degrees in Social Studies, Spanish, and English. She has raised four children, loved seven grandchildren, and spent nearly half a century pouring herself into other people’s kids. Then Lyme disease entered the picture. Lyme disease, caused by a deer tick bite, doesn’t always stay in the background. It flares. It cau...

Most children's books teach kids how to share, be kind, or brush their teeth. F.K. Smith's Polar Bear, Solar Bear does something far more ambitious: it walks young readers through what life actually looks like when someone you love gets sick and keeps going anyway. Smith wrote the book out of her own lived experience with Lyme disease. Diagnosed after a deer tick bite, she faces cycles of illness and recovery that have shaped her daily life for years. Rather than shy away from that reality, she wove it directly into a story for children ages 3 to 5, and the result is something parents and kids alike are talking about. A Bear Who Doesn't Belong Until She Does At the center of the story is Solar Bear, a polar bear cub born in Alaska who simply cannot survive the cold. Her mother, knowing her cub needs warmth to live, makes the heartbreaking decision to send her south to Louisiana. What follows is a story about a little bear learning to thrive in a world that was never ...

  F.K. Smith's Polar Bear, Solar Bear Explained Most children's books teach kids how to share, be kind, or brush their teeth. F.K. Smith's Polar Bear, Solar Bear does something far more ambitious: it walks young readers through what life actually looks like when someone you love gets sick and keeps going anyway. Smith wrote the book out of her own lived experience with Lyme disease. Diagnosed after a deer tick bite, she faces cycles of illness and recovery that have shaped her daily life for years. Rather than shy away from that reality, she wove it directly into a story for children ages 3 to 5, and the result is something parents and kids alike are talking about. A Bear Who Doesn't Belong Until She Does At the center of the story is Solar Bear, a polar bear cub born in Alaska who simply cannot survive the cold. Her mother, knowing her cub needs warmth to live, makes the heartbreaking decision to send her south to Louisiana. What follows is a story about a l...