When a 50-foot-high iceberg crashes into their ice floe, 14-year-old Alika and his younger brother Sulu are separated from land and home. Over the next six months, alone on the massive floe, the two boys face survival in the harsh Arctic winter, hunting for seals, avoiding polar bears, and trying to stay warm. Inspired by the true story of the 1871 polar exploration ship Polaris, Taylor’s third-person narrative follows the dual stories of the boys and of their mother trying to find them. For such a dramatic tale, the telling is rather flat. The lack of tension and the uneasy mixture of story and information hamper what has obvious potential, but the plot will attract readers, and the tear-jerking conclusion will satisfy those who go with the floe. (Inuit glossary, author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)
