A Maritimes question...
Apr. 1st, 2007 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daemonlunaI've been reading for a provincial kids' book award committee since December, and am halfway through my latest stack of about ten books. (So far, one really good but a touch too old for target age range, two okay, and one not-so-great.) The not-so-great one takes place in Newfoundland. For all that it's a teenage-boy survival story, it's remarkably maudlin in spots. All that aside...
So, our intrepid main character is out in his dead brother's kayak, and gets caught unawares by a storm and washed up on a small island. It takes place... somewhere in Newfoundland, in a small-ish town with a fish-packing factory. With A DAY of ending up on the island, he kills a wounded seal (but he doesn't WANT to, angstangstANGST), skins it with his pocketknife and wears the skin (no mention of any kind of cleaning, tanning, etc.), the NEXT DAY has dried seal meat (no mention of any kind of drying process--he doesn't manage to start a fire unril the fourth day) and oh, then there are the dreams he has about the Beothuk people, and the wisdom imparted by the elders about spirit animals, and of COURSE his dead brother is a seal and his dead grandfather is a polar bear and his pothead friend is a gull, and he is a caribou...
Now, I'm a prairie girl. I am perhaps not as familiar with the geographic dispersement of Arctic wildlife or the indigenous wildlife of the east coast as I should be. But what I want to know... is it just me, or is it highly improbable that on his little island, he would be attacked by a (OMG!) POLAR BEAR?
So, our intrepid main character is out in his dead brother's kayak, and gets caught unawares by a storm and washed up on a small island. It takes place... somewhere in Newfoundland, in a small-ish town with a fish-packing factory. With A DAY of ending up on the island, he kills a wounded seal (but he doesn't WANT to, angstangstANGST), skins it with his pocketknife and wears the skin (no mention of any kind of cleaning, tanning, etc.), the NEXT DAY has dried seal meat (no mention of any kind of drying process--he doesn't manage to start a fire unril the fourth day) and oh, then there are the dreams he has about the Beothuk people, and the wisdom imparted by the elders about spirit animals, and of COURSE his dead brother is a seal and his dead grandfather is a polar bear and his pothead friend is a gull, and he is a caribou...
Now, I'm a prairie girl. I am perhaps not as familiar with the geographic dispersement of Arctic wildlife or the indigenous wildlife of the east coast as I should be. But what I want to know... is it just me, or is it highly improbable that on his little island, he would be attacked by a (OMG!) POLAR BEAR?
