From the most celebrated children’s nature writer of our time comes a posthumous new novel in the tradition of her Newbery award-winning Julie of the Wolves In 1848, a young boy witnesses a rare sight—the birth of a bowhead, or ice whale, he calls Siku. Years later, he unwittingly brings about the death of an entire pod of whales, and only Siku survives. For this act, the boy receives a curse of banishment. Through the generations, this curse is handed down: Siku returns year after year, in reality and dreams, to haunt the boy’s descendants. Told in alternating voices, both human and whale, Jean Craighead George’s last novel shows the interconnectedness of humankind and the animals they depend on. “It’s a bold, wistful, and heartfelt coda to a distinguished career.”—School Library Journal

"Provides information for young readers about beluga whales, including habitat, eating habits, mating, babies, and conservation"--Provided by publisher.

In the pages that follow, the story of commercial whaling in the western Arctic is told by a scholar intimately acquainted with the terrain--not only as it can be found in the historical records or at archaeological sites, but from lone experience on the shores and waters where the great adventure was played out. His book is written with such mastery and vigor that we confidently greet it as the finest history yet written on any aspect of American whaling.

Bill Hess -a noted photographer - began his association with the Inupiat Eskimos in 1982. Eventually, he got permission to accompany them on their historic whale hunt. This book is his record, in sensitive text and almost 200 stark images, of what he experienced. Hess explores Inupiat history and traditions juxtaposed against contemporary life, never shying away from the controversial aspects of this ancient trek. Gift of the Whale is a rare contribution to Native history.

Tells the story of survival of the crew members of a group of whaling ships that became trapped in ice in the Arctic in 1871.

In The Whale and the Supercomputer, scientists and natives wrestle with our changing climate in the land where it has hit first--and hardest A traditional Eskimo whale-hunting party races to shore near Barrow, Alaska--their comrades trapped on a floe drifting out to sea--as ice that should be solid this time of year gives way. Elsewhere, a team of scientists transverses the tundra, sleeping in tents, surviving on frozen chocolate, and measuring the snow every ten kilometers in a quest to understand the effects of albedo, the snow's reflective ability to cool the earth beneath it. Climate change isn't an abstraction in the far North. It is a reality that has already dramatically altered daily life, especially that of the native peoples who still live largely off the land and sea. Because nature shows her footprints so plainly here, the region is also a lure for scientists intent on comprehending the complexities of climate change. In this gripping account, Charles Wohlforth follows the two groups as they navigate a radically shifting landscape. The scientists attempt to decipher its smallest elements and to derive from them a set of abstract laws and models. The natives draw on uncannily accurate traditional knowledge, borne of long experience living close to the land. Even as they see the same things-a Native elder watches weather coming through too fast to predict; a climatologist notes an increased frequency of cyclonic systems-the two cultures struggle to reconcile their vastly different ways of comprehending the environment. With grace, clarity, and a sense of adventure, Wohlforth--a lifelong Alaskan--illuminates both ways of seeing a world in flux, and in the process, helps us to navigate a way forward as climate change reaches us all.