Snow Baby: The Arctic Childhood of Admiral Robert E. Peary's Daring Daughter [Hardcover]

Katherine Kirkpatrick (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

Born in a two-room, tar paper-covered house in the far north of Greenland, Marie Ahnighito Peary was destined to have an exciting childhood. Her parents, the famous explorer Robert E. Peary and Josephine Peary, had shocked Victorian society by starting their family so far away from "civilization." Fair-skinned children were so rare in the far North that the local Inuit called Marie "Snow Baby." Growing up partly in Greenland wearing native clothing, Marie and her Inuit playmates explored the frozen tundra, played with sled dog puppies, and kept a baby musk ox as a pet. As a seven-year-old, Marie spent a perilous winter trapped on a ship that had been iced in. Map, time line, bibliography, index.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4–8—Born north of the Arctic Circle in 1893, Marie Ahnighito Peary published her own version of her youth in 1934 (The Snowbaby's Own Story), on which this book is based. Kirkpatrick's engaging text captures the girl's adventurous spirit and the opportunities that her father's life as an explorer presented, as well as her love of the North and her Inuit friends. Numerous black-and-white photos show the child growing up and pictures from the admiral's quest. A photo of four-month-old Marie reaching for a sunbeam—her first experience of sunlight after the long Arctic night—is especially poignant. It's impossible not to contrast the more staid images of traditional portraits with the lively candid shots of her at a ship's helm or standing with her Inuit friends dressed in animal skins. Children will relate to nine-year-old Marie's letter urging her father to stay home rather than go exploring again. Notes divided into primary and secondary sources, a bibliography, and acknowledgments reveal Kirkpatrick's thoughtful scholarship and reliance on Peary's book. A terrific addition for most collections.—Janet S. Thompson, Chicago Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* When Marie Peary, daughter of the famous explorer, was six weeks old, her mother wrapped her in a caribou skin bag, furs, and an American flag. Young Marie had a childhood like no other. Called Snow Baby by the Inuit, who had never seen a blonde, blue-eyed child, she moved back and forth between the icy domains where her father kept camp as he continued his expeditions and the U.S., where her mother's relatives led a genteel life. Kirkpatrick had great source material to work with: both Marie and her mother wrote their own books. But her own involving writing gets this right down to children's level as she picks out the details that will appeal to them most: Christmas in arctic climes, a frightening shipwreck, Marie's friendships with Inuit children. She wisely frames the youngster's personal story against a larger one--the repeated struggles of her father to reach the North Pole. This has everything--adventure, longing for a parent, the juxtaposition of cultures--all wrapped up in an attractive package, studded with fabulous photographs. A solid bibliography and source notes for the quotes are appended. REVWR
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 48 pages
• Publisher: Holiday House; 1St Edition edition (February 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823419738
• ISBN-13: 978-0823419739
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 9.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,481,391 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ice ice baby, May 12, 2007

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Snow Baby: The Arctic Childhood of Admiral Robert E. Peary's Daring Daughter (Hardcover)

There are topics in this world that lend themselves to children's non-fiction. Some of these topics are the usual cast of characters. The Titanic. Roanoke. The Molasses Flood of 1919. Other topics are a little less well-known but when you hear of them your jaw drops and you sputter something along the lines of, "How did no one think to write this book until now?" I would say that Katherine Kirkpatrick's, "The Snow Baby" falls squarely into the latter category. Quick and fun, factual and fast-paced, the story of Admiral Peary's daughter and her years in the frozen north makes for ideal non-fiction reading for kids.

She was born in the far north of Greenland in 1893 in a part of the world where the sun wasn't to appear again for months. The daughter of the American Arctic explorer Lieutenant Robert E. Peary and his wife Josephine, Marie Ahnighito Peary spent her early years bouncing about the frozen north. Her father was determined to become the first man to reach the North Pole, and once in a while his family joined him part of the way on his expeditions. Marie's life consisted of Inuit friends, snow as far as the eye can see, and small adventures on the ice. Author Katherine Kirkpatrick traces Marie's numerous journeys between America and the Arctic, while also charting her father's dream and the lives of everyone she touched.

Kirkpatrick cleverly limits the length of the story to a mere 50 pages or so. In doing so it's as interesting to take note of what she does mention as what she doesn't. For example, Matthew Henson was Peary's personal aide in the Arctic. He was also an African-American and a true hero in his own right. And Kirkpatrick does eventually sort of mention to this fact by and by, but her focus is squarely on Marie. Mr. Henson's skin color comes out in degrees more than anything else. She also is exceedingly careful with her facts. At no point does Kirkpatrick ever force her own opinion onto the reader. With an impartiality verging on the distanced, we learn of the two Inuit children Peary fathered when his wife was not around. We hear about how he took three meteorites the Inuits used for making knives and spear points with a quiet, "Peary saw no reason why he shouldn't take the meteorites from Greenland. According to him, the Inuit no longer needed the iron meteorites because they could now trade for metal knife blades." Be that as it may, as we read towards the end of the book the Inuit were "left without the trade goods they'd grown accustomed to," after Peary's departed in 1909. Kirkpatrick is sly. She is certainly allowing the child reader the chance to reach their own conclusions on these subjects without seemingly putting forth her own. Just the same, when she recounts how Peary hired Matthew Henson for his lectures, Kirkpatrick points out that Matt was hired, "to wear (and perspire in) thick furs." True enough. You can give facts that damn a man without having actually write, "What an awful guy!," on the page. This distance is necessary when discussing the Inuit too. We hear about how Marie's friend Billy Bah was married at fourteen. Later we see a cheery twelve-year-old with her own baby. Some authors would condemn this practice. Others might try to explain it. Kirkpatrick, however, lays the facts before you and then takes a step back. However you choose to digest this information is up to you and you alone.

One of the first things that really struck me about this book was the number of photographs found here. I count at least sixty-three photographs in this book. Of these, a stunning twenty-eight are of Marie herself. Additionally, each page contains at least one photo, usually with more than one breaking up the text. Considering the time period with which we are dealing (late 19th/early 20th century) the fact that there even were this many photographs taken is impressive in and of itself. And that so many of them were taken of a single girl is just children's book gold. Kirkpatrick does a remarkable job of showing you images of many of the characters mentioned in the book too. The sole exception, I guess, would have to be Marie's childhood companion Koodlooktoo who only appears as a very small infant at the beginning of the book. And you can hardly blame the author for not being able to produce his face out of thin air.

And did I mention how exciting it was? One minute Marie's sliding down a hill and the next thing you know she's about to skim right over a cliff into the frozen waters below unless Koodlooktoo is able to save her. Ships are constantly getting iced in and trapped. People have to eat dogs. The book's wild and the fact that it's so well researched and cited just aids to the pleasure of reading it. Kirkpatrick is careful to include a Bibliography of First and Secondary Sources, a list of Source Notes, an Index, and a long listing of Picture Credits for anyone curious as to where she found all these great shots. Proper credit is given in the text itself to Ms. Peary's own book, "The Snowbaby's Own Story," though I would hazard a guess that this book is the more honest of the two. Something tells me that Marie probably wouldn't have mentioned her illegitimate half-brothers and sisters when discussing her much beloved (and absent) father.

If I were placed in charge of marketing this book, you know the first thing I would have mentioned in the bookflap/press releases/what-have-you would be the fact that its subject (deep breath), Marie Ahnighito Peary Stafford Kuhne, was a children's author in her own right. You may have stumbled on her Little Tooktoo stories at some point in your travels. In any case, with its short length and young subject, "The Snow Baby" might pair very well with other non-fiction titles like, The Cat With the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin by Susan Goldman Rubin. And for those people wishing to do a unit on polar exploration, you might want to consider also taking a look at, Onward: A Photobiography of African-American Polar Explorer Matthew Henson by Delores Johnson. All in all, consider this a really spectacular non-fiction choice for any given year. A non-fiction read that comes across as a true pleasure.

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book about a remarkable girl, January 3, 2012

By 

DJ Joe Sixpack (...in Middle America) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Snow Baby: The Arctic Childhood of Admiral Robert E. Peary's Daring Daughter (Paperback)

------------------------------------------------------------------
"The Snow Baby: The Arctic Childhood
Of Admiral Robert E. Peary's Daring Daughter"
by Katherine Kirkpatrick
(Holiday House, 2007)
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This is a short, well-written, spellbinding biography of Marie Peary, the daughter of the famed 19th Century explorer Robert E. Peary, who was credited with being the first man to reach the North Pole. Peary's final success came in 1909, after nearly three decades of struggle and hardship, punctuated by near-death accidents and extensive speaking tours designed to raise funds for his quest. In 1893, on one of several polar expeditions, Peary brought his wife along and she gave birth to their daughter Marie in a remote Arctic outpost; Marie spent her earliest months in the long Arctic night, and was initially raised among the rugged sailors and tribal Inuit who worked with Peary on his journeys. Her dramatic, unusual birth fit into the whirlwind of publicity that surrounded Peary's work, so that not only was she a child of the frozen north, she was also born into celebrity, and she accepted these circumstances with a calm, even cheerfulness and a strength of character that clearly reflected that of both her parents.

Along with a bright, cogent narrative text, this book includes several magical photographs of the Pearys that beautifully bring the narrative to life: there are photos of Admiral Peary in the icy wastes, of their ships, trapped for months inside frozen harbors, of the Inuit and their gorgeous sled dogs and -- most strikingly -- photos of young Marie Peary, clad in fur with her eyes full of life and joy and utterly fearless and bright. Both her story and her strong character are remarkable, and will enthrall children and adults alike. Highly recommended! (ReadThatAgain children's book reviews)

5.0 out of 5 stars A remarkable tale of a remarkable childhood, June 14, 2007

By 

Judith Lindbergh - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Snow Baby: The Arctic Childhood of Admiral Robert E. Peary's Daring Daughter (Hardcover)

Katherine Kirkpatrick's The Snow Baby tells the remarkable tale of a remarkable childhood. Marie Ahnighito Peary, daughter of Arctic explorer Admiral Robert E. Peary, was born in a hut on the coast of Greenland, and spent much of her childhood accompanying her father and mother on excursions to the Arctic, eventually witnessing the historic triumph of Peary's North Pole expedition. Ms. Kirkpatrick's prose is clear and engaging, approaching her topic with historical accuracy and charm. She describes Marie Peary's adventures on the ice from a child's eye point of view, giving equal attention to historic events, Marie's love for wild arctic pets, and her excitement at wearing a grown-up dress. Even life-threatening circumstances are made fun and full of joy as Marie over-winters on a ship locked in the ice, narrowly escapes an avalanche, and races off a cracking ice-sheet that had been the site of outdoor games moments before. When Marie witnesses an Inuit walrus hunt, she focuses her appreciation on the skill of the hunters to deal with her distaste. The harshness of the Arctic experience is reflected instead on a beloved rabbit that dies on deck, exposed to the unrelenting cold.

Relying on Marie Peary's own writings and related works, Ms. Kirkpatrick depicts a girl with spunk, endurance, and a gift for taking her extraordinary life in stride. The Snow Baby is beautifully illustrated with period photographs, clippings, and even a handwritten letter from Marie, making the book a handsome and fascinating portrait of an inspiring young girl.