Drifting Snow [Hardcover]

Houston (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up

Having been taken from her Arctic home when a tiny child, a teenager returns to look for her parents and learn once again about her Eskimo culture.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-7-- Houston takes actual historical events and builds a story around an Inuit-Eskimo girl who returns to the Arctic to search for her roots. Elizabeth Queen, 13, leaves the security of foster care to find her family from whom she was separated as a toddler. Elizabeth, or ``Elizapee'' as she is called by the Nesak Island people who take her in, learns her native language and how to survive the harsh environment. As the nomadic group moves to its summer hunting area, she begins to realize how much this lifestyle means to her and yet, when she finally is reunited with her birth family in a large settlement, the decision about where she belongs is a difficult one. There is a little romance involved between Elizapee and Poota, her first benefactor in the Nesak Island family. A bit annoying is Houston's obvious admiration of the Eskimo people to the point that he generalizes, ``Always these northern people were watchful and cautious, for they intended to continue surviving in nature as they had for countless generations.'' While occasionally preachy, the spare prose gives readers a feel for an environment in which all energy is precious, not to be wasted. While this unique culture will be unfamiliar to most readers, the theme of a girl of ``both worlds'' searching for her identity is universal. Adolescents will relate to her struggles and see that growing up is never easy. --Mollie Bynum, Chester Valley Elementary School, Anchorage, AK
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

James Houston, a Canadian author-artist, served with the Toronto Scottish Regiment in World War II, 1940-45, then lived among the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic for twelve years as a Northern Service Officer, and the first Administrator of west Baffin Island, a territory of 65,000 square miles. Widely acknowledged as the prime force in the development of Inuit art, he is past chairman of both the American Indian Arts Centre and the Association on American Indian and Eskimo Cultural Foundation Award, the 1979 Inuit Kuavati Award of Merit, and the 1997 Royal Geographic Society’s Massey Medal, and is an officer of the Order of Canada.

Among his writings, The White Dawn has been published in thirty-one editions worldwide. That novel and Ghost Fox, Spirit Wrestler, and Eagle Song have been selections of major book clubs. Running West won the Canadian Authors Association Book of the Year Award, while his novel, The Ice Master, also appeared in Spanish translation. Author and illustrator of seventeen children’s books, he is the only person to have won the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award three times. His most recent children’s book is Fire and Ice, about creating glass sculpture. He has also written screenplays for feature films, has created numerous documentaries and continues to lecture widely.

His drawings, paintings, and sculptures are internationally represented in many museums including the St. Petersburg Museum in Florida and private collections including that of the King of Saudi Arabia. He is Master Designer for Steuben Glass, with one hundred and ten pieces to his credit. He created the seventy-foot-high central sculpture in the Glenbow-Alberta Art Museum. In 1999 Canada’s National Museum of Civilization devoted its show “Iqqaipaa” to the art of the Arctic in James Houston’s time, and he played a central role in organizing the exhibition.

He and his wife Alice divided their time between a colonial privateer’s house in New England and a writing retreat on the bank of a salmon river on the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia, where he has written a large part of his trilogy of memoirs, Confessions of an Igloo Dweller, Zigzag, and Hideaway.

James Houston passed away in 2005 at the age of 83. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 150 pages
• Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry (November 30, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689505639
• ISBN-13: 978-0689505638
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,946,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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