On thin ice
Jamie Bastedo2006

Grade 8 Up–Ashley's frightening dreams of a singing and drum-playing bear-man shaman cause her to become obsessed with Nanurluk, the legendary spirit bear of the Inuit people. Then the mangled body of a classmate is found along the ice road outside of the Arctic town of Nanurtalik, and Ashley learns that it has the earmarks of a polar bear attack. Although villagers haven't seen the animals in the area for decades, random sightings and reports by a visiting scientist point to the possibility that climate change is altering their distribution. Artistic Ashley begins drawing images from her dreams and listening closely to her elder Uncle Jonah's songs. Her adventure meter ticking, she investigates the mysterious icehouse, explores an ancient spirit trail, and joins her father on a bear hunt. By the end of the book, when Jonah disappears and the scientist finds, near the old man's glasses, a dead polar bear with two hearts, Ashley is convinced of the spiritual connection she and her family have to the shaman. While readers will be intrigued with the mystical elements of the story as they are woven into the realistic daily life of a modern Arctic teen, there are also many undisguised messages about global warming, chaos theory, and man's effect on weather patterns. Human encroachment into animal habitat is illustrated by a few chapters told from the polar bear's viewpoint, as hunter and hunted.