School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-A beginning note and map show the parts of the world where these animals live and the route they take during their seasonal migration. French follows a female and her yearling, Ragged Ear and Soft Ear. With the other females and calves, they leave their home in the Northwest Territories and begin moving north, leaving the males behind. Through blizzards, across ice, braving wolf attacks, the caribou continue on and in June, they reach the calving grounds where Long Legs is born. By following this mother and yearling, French's present-tense narration has immediacy, and the rigors of the journey are shown through illustrations done in soft blues, beige, and grays. Two columns of text are placed together on one side of each spread, allowing an uninterrupted sense of the immense landscape. A particularly arresting scene is that of the long lines of caribou all traveling in the same direction as seen from above. A good selection for nature assignments or for nonfiction book reports.-Sally Bates Goodroe, formerly at Harris County Public Library, Houston, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Ages 6-8. This new volume in the Fantastic Journeys series focuses on the mysteries of animal migration by telling a story about the annual march of caribou to their calving grounds, a journey that the Inuit call "The Wandering Time." Characters are a pregnant caribou, Ragged Ear, and her eight-month-old calf, Soft Ear. The watercolor-and-pencil illustrations convey the dangers of the journey, which extends from February to June: the whiteouts, the scarcity of food, the ever-present danger of cunning wolves. Two separate wolf attacks, shocking in their suddenness and in the honesty of their depiction in the artwork, really bring home the peril of the migration. French presents a good deal of information as she tells a gripping fictional story, which is not only about animal behavior but also about loss and reunion. --Connie Fletcher
