From the most celebrated
children’s nature writer of our time comes a posthumous new novel in the
tradition of her Newbery Award-winning Julie of the Wolves.
In 1848 in Barrow, Alaska, a
young Eskimo boy witnesses a rare sight—the birth of a bowhead, or ice whale,
that he calls Siku. But when he unwittingly guides Yankee whalers to a pod of
bowhead whales, all the whales are killed. For this act, the boy receives a
curse of banishment. Through the generations, this curse is handed down. Siku,
the ice whale, returns year after year, in reality and dreams, to haunt each
descendant. The curse is finally broken when a daughter recognizes and saves
the whale, and he in turn saves her. Told in alternating voices, both human and
whale, Jean Craighead George’s last novel is an ambitious and touching take on
the interconnectedness of humans, animals, and the earth they depend on.
Download and start listening now!
“Hearing majestic whale vocalizations, listeners
will be spellbound by the final story in George’s saga of two hundred years in
the life of a bowhead whale and its relationship with humankind…Narrator
Christina Moore is equal to the task of bringing the generations of Toozak’s
descendants and their contemporaries to life.…The natural world plays a big part in this story, and Moore’s elegant
voice graces it with the import it deserves.”
—
AudioFile