From School Library Journal
Grade 6-9 Best friends Matthew and Kayak continue their adventures on Baffin Island in Houston's third book about the boys. At the beginning of this story, the boys, along with Matthew's father and Charlie, the helicopter pilot, are rescued from the oil-well site they discovered in Black Diamonds (Atheneum, 1982) . After the rescue Matthew and Kayak join a scientific expedition to study whale migration. Jill, the daughter of the expedition director, teaches Matthew and Kayak how to scuba dive and the three young people encounter exciting and dangerous situations underwater. Accurate information about the Arctic and whales is included and is sometimes integral to the plot. During the scientific discussions, Kayak often relates legends of the Inuit. Kayak and other Inuit characters frequently speak in Inuktitut, but their words are defined in context. Although there are flashback references to Frozen Fire (Atheneum, 1977) and Black Diamonds , this title can stand alone as a separate adventure. An additional adventure for those libraries with a Houston following. Ruth Fitzgerald, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant
Copyright 2002 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.