Sea Cows, Shamans, and Scurvy: Alaska's First Naturalist: Georg Wilhelm Steller
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, AnchorageCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.