From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up—Arnold tells an amazing story of exploration, natural history, and survival. Steller was a naturalist/doctor who accompanied the explorer Vitus Bering on his voyages from the Kamchatka Peninsula to the Alaska coast at a time when that area was one of the last uncharted spots on the world map. From 1738, when Steller set off overland from Moscow to cross the Ural Mountains and join Bering's Second Kamchatka Expedition, until he died in 1743, he documented Siberian and Alaska plant and animal life and produced a monumental compendium of natural history and human cultures. A number of species carry his name (Steller's jay, Steller's sea lion, Steller's eider, and others), and his descriptions bear witness to the now-extinct sea cow and spectacled cormorant. The text is profusely illustrated with Arnold's quirky line drawings that recall Steller's era. An unfortunate choice places some of the most interesting narrative and needed background information in 30-odd pages of endnotes. Accomplished readers, who will be the audience for this work, would have followed these in the main text but may miss important details if they skip these substantial notes. For example, Steller's birthplace is given as "the Lutheran city of Windsheim," but the fact that Windsheim is now a German city but at the time was part of the Holy Roman Empire is relegated to notes that only the most intrepid student will find 169 pages later.—
Sue Sherif, Alaska State Library, Anchorage Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Born and educated in Germany, eighteenth-century naturalist Steller traveled to Russia and joined the Second Kamchatka Expedition. Journeying across Siberia, Steller studied wildlife and the ways of native peoples before joining Bering in sailing to North America and landing in Alaska. Through stricken by scurvy and storms, shipwrecked, and nearly starved, Steller and the remaining crew returned to Kamchatka. The lengthy back matter includes an afterword, a concordance of animals and plants, a time line, historical notes, source notes, and an annotated bibliography. The book design is attractive, and small, naive drawings illustrate the text. The chapters concerning the voyage to Alaska are the most exciting and probably the most interesting to a North American audience. Although the book’s opening anecdote is odd (Arnold relates without comment that Steller was born “a dead baby” but returned to life after being wrapped in warm blankets), this biography appears to be very extensively researched and overflows with historical details. For larger collections. Grades 7-10. --Carolyn Phelan
