Black Star, Bright Dawn

by Scott O'Dell
Available from Amazon
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The father of the Bright Dawn, the heroine of this story, is stranded on an ice floe while seal hunting. The sea becomes a terror to him, and they move from the Alaskan coast. He is asked to represent their new village in the Iditarod, and trains for it until an accident prevents his racing. Then Bright Dawn takes his place, with Black Star, her favorite dog, as her leader. No one from their town had ever finished the race. Bright Dawn runs into many hardships and dangers, but races well. She was the first to enter Iditarod, and also wins an award for taking care of other racers in trouble, even though it slowed her down. When she and her dogs are stranded on an ice floe, her father comes to the rescue. She finishes the race, becoming the first one from her village to do so.

Bright Star and her family are traditional Eskimos. There is plenty of Eskimo mythology and superstition throughout the book; Bright Dawn is portrayed as being true to her people when she relinquishes her skepticism (created by English influences) and decides to trust the old Eskimo gods, traditions, and talismans.

I thought the book was not one of O'Dell's better works. I was disappointed in the way he presented the Eskimos' beliefs, although I admire the way he portrayed their resourcefulness. I also thought the storyline was rather boring.

Julie of the Wolves

by Jean Craighead George
Available from Amazon
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This book is in three parts. In the first part tells we meet Miyax on the Arctic tundra after running away from her marriage. We find that she is only thirteen years old, and is going to meet a friend in San Francisco. Miyax has run out of provisions for her trip, and realizes that she is lost. She decides to join a wolf pack to survive, so she studies their behavior and imitates it. She is accepted, and is able to care for herself. She also recognizes birds and, knowing their migration habits, is able to discern her location and direction.

The second part tells Miyax’s life before part one. It tells of her father, Kapugen, and how he sent her to live with his aunt Martha and go to school, where she is called Julie. One day Aunt Martha told Miyax that her father had never returned from a hunting trip, and pieces of his kayak were found on the shore. Kapugen had arranged a marriage between Miyax and the son of one of his old friends. When she met Daniel, she was disappointed to realize that he was mentally slow. After her marriage, she basically became a helper to Daniel’s mother in her business of making parkas to sell to tourists. One day Daniel came home angry because others were taunting him with “having a wife and not knowing how to mate her.” Miyax ran away in fear that night.

Part three goes back to being lost on the tundra. Miyax grows to love her wolf pack, and looks to the leader as her father. When she sees him killed for sport, she decides not to head to San Francisco where people do not recognize the value of the old Eskimo ways. She chooses to live alone in the wild, until she meets some people who tell her that her father is not dead. She goes to find him, but thinks that he has forsaken the Eskimo ways, and is part of the kind of people that would kill her wolf father for sport. In the end of the book, she sees that maybe the time of the Eskimos is past, and returns to her father.

I didn’t care for this book too much, probably because it reminded me of Scott O’Dell’s The Island of the Blue Dolphins. Then I realized that the same author wrote My Side of the Mountain, which is the same kind of survival story. It didn’t seem to have all that much of a plot, and I didn’t care for the part about Miyax’s marriage, or the way she identified with the wolves. I think it’s because we as people are social creatures, designed to live with each other, not alone in isolation from other people. We desire to have companions, and although dogs or other animals may be man’s best friend, and solitude is necessary at times, it is hard for me to connect with a book like this.