Swift
Grade 2–4—Johnnie tells of his first bear-hunting expedition in the Alaskan Wilderness with his dad and their "knowledgeable" dog, Swift. On the third day of their trip, a grizzly crashes out of the woods and attacks them. When Johnnie's father shoots and misses the bear and instead breaks his leg, he tells his son to take the dog and go for help. The dramatic oil paintings are a blend of realistic and impressionistic style created with a thickly layered palette whose texture helps convey the haunting grandeur and loneliness of various landscapes of forest, tundra, mountains, and river; the cold is palpable. The compressed text describes in staccato style some exciting events; but it lacks character development and context. Some of the elements are not fully credible. At one point, Johnnie falls into an "icy" beaver pond, and later, he cannot make a fire because his matches are wet; it seems somewhat unbelievable that he can survive the cold and snow despite his frozen feet and frozen clothing. An endpaper map suggests an immensity of space but does not convey a realistic sense of either the distance or the amount of time that the boy travels. Still, the art is spectacular, and worth sharing with children.—Kirsten Cutler, Sonoma County Library, CACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.