A SEAL'S WORLD

by Frank Stuart ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 25, 1954

Readers of this author's previous City Of The Bees (1949) and Wild Wings (1951) know that he has a vivid ability (some reviewers thought it too vivid) to invest natural history with personality, color and even melodrama (and some felt that truth was lost in the process). Here again a seal's far travels, over some 10,000 miles, reflect the wonderland of the Arctic, the mysteries of instincts that command, of tribal migrations, and of animal lives always hedged by death. The Wanderer is two weeks old when she loses her mother in a March tempest, and learns, with none to help her, all the lessons of living, in and out of water. From the breeding lair, past the ice floes and into the polar oceans, there are threats from sharks, Killer whales, bears, foxes and men, and when the Wanderer is lost there is the hostility of distant herds, of harp and other seals. Living and learning through her hobbledehoy days, seeing death in many forms, warned by messages of food and fear, the Wanderer grows up and returns to mate with the male she had once played with. The wonderful ways of nature are part of the playfulness, gregariousness and special adaptation of the harp seal and are given even stronger dramatic treatment than the Carrighar books. But it's fun for the unspecialized reader.

Pub Date: May 25, 1954

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1954

Categories: NONFICTION