cover image Orcas Around Me: My Alaskan Summer

Orcas Around Me: My Alaskan Summer

Deborah Page, Debra Page. Albert Whitman & Company, $15.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8075-6137-9

A fishing captain in Alaska for 20 years, Page writes about her family's experiences trolling the North Pacific Ocean for salmon, adopting the voice of her eight-year-old son, Taiga. Explaining that he and his younger brother split their summer vacation time between their parents' fishing boats, Taiga shares anecdotes of on-board daily routines and of encounters with a sea lion, a sea otter and porpoises. These mild, breezy snippets will have readers tasting salt and smelling fish. In the more dramatic title episode, three orca whales for some reason roll their bodies against the boat carrying Taiga's family and then swim away. Bowman (The Fiddler of the Northern Lights), who visited the Pages in Southeast Alaska to research this project, contributes spare, somewhat pale watercolor illustrations that evoke both the ocean's wild openness and the family's warmth. Her softly realistic images complement Taiga's ingenuous narrative. This engaging account introduces life on the water in a frank and factual, nuts-and-bolts way that also communicates the thrill of such mysteries as orca behavior and porpoise communication. Ages 6-9. (Aug.)