On Thin Ice

By Jamie Bastedo and Annabeth Albert

Book Overview

Ashley Anowiak is in search of a murderous polar bear that may be real or mythical.

The only thing for certain is that what she discovers will change her life - and her community's - forever.

In spite of its name, no one in the tiny troubled hamlet of Nanurtalik "the place with polar bears" can remember seeing a polar bear in decades. But when a teenager's dismembered body is discovered on a nearby ice road, everyone fears polar bears have returned. The community is thrown into chaos as another suspected bear attack sparks a flury of bullets that whiz through the town during a blinding four-day blizzard. Was it a real or phantom bear? No one can say for sure.

Ashley Anowiak is swept into this storm of confusion by her special link with polar bears expressed through the magic of her art and the terror of her dreams. She finds herself on the trail of Nanurluk, a giant bear that has haunted her people for thousands of years.

Ashley's bear hunt leads from the frozen catacombs beneath Itkiqtuqjuaq to the jumbled ice fields covering the Arctic Ocean. As she closes in on the bear, Ashley's inner and outer worlds are torn apart, leaving her desperate for any stability she can find.

This is the story of a gifted northern youth struggling to find her true home in a fast-changing arctic, where culture, climate and landscape seem to be crumbling all around her.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0889953376
• ISBN13: 9780889953376
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Red Deer Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 7.6"
• Age Range: 12 to 14 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 9

Customer Reviews

Conflicts between Arctic Ice and the Spirit World

I have a keen interest in the Global Warming debate and the reasons behind our strange weather. In this book, the author blends strange weather events with a spiritual connection with an animal that has the most to lose with changing weather: The Polar Bear. A teenager in a small Arctic town struggles with her inner spiritual calling and identity and grapples with the physical results of melting snow and confused wildlife as a result. Birds appear where they don't belong - Polar Bears return to an area where they have been absent for 30 years - local natives [elders] try to figure out the hidden messages in the snow. The book is more about the spiritual struggles with main character rather than the global warming issue - but that's probably the main point - global warming is a "global" phenomenon - but people must deal with it on a very personal and local level, since they will be helpless in dealing with it on the global scale.