This is what a picture book should be. A perfect pairing of beautiful text and beautiful illustrations. I love haiku and Jack Prelutsky's verses are beautiful examples of the form. I love poems that linger, that take up residence in your heart and resonate long after the book is closed. The title poem has made a nest in my ear and sings to me while I'm doing the dishes:

If not for the cat, And the scarcity of cheese, I could be content.

It has something of the simplicity and weight that I find so pleasing in William Carlos Williams. And several others are beginning to work their way in as well. Like this one about the kangaroo:

Safe inside my pouch Sleeps the future of my kind-- Delicate and frail.

Nor am I the only one. After only two or three readings my three-year old remembers and recites quite a few lines herself. I have found her picking up the book on her own, flipping through the pages, and reciting what she remembers. Each poem is in the voice of a different animal and Prelutsky's genius is in the personality of the different voices, hard to convey in a so short a form as haiku. I love the way he captures the slow sloth, the hive mind of the ants, (humorously followed immediately by the ant eater), and the threatening presence of the snake and the skunk. Especially memorable are the rounded polysyllables of the jellyfish:

Boneless, translucent, We undulate, undulate, Gelatinously.

Ted Rand's paintings are a lovely match, each one has a very different tone, well suited to the paired poem. My favorite is definitely the dark, moody one of the moth drawing close to a candle. Though the bright hummingbird hovering near festive orange nasturtiums is also right up there.

Her Eskimo name is Miyax, her American name is Julie. She is journeying through the desolate North Slope of Alaska, from Barrow to Point Hope, and starving. There are no lemmings, which means there are no weasels, no white foxes, no snowy owls - in fact, no food that Miyax can catch with only a knife. Her only hope for survival, she feels, is to befriend the wolves, to become a member of their pack, and this she sets out to do.

The book is divided into three parts - the first part, Amaroq the Wolf, tells in intense anthropological detail how 13 year old Miyax strives to study and become accepted by the wolf pack so she can have a share of their kills. The tone is completely unsentimental but infused with the fervent admiration and affection Miyax feels for these fellow travelers.

The second part is a flashback recounting how Miyax was raised by her father in an Eskimo seal camp until the age of nine, when she had to live with her aunt in order to go to school. In order to escape from this life, she was willing to cooperate in the traditional child-marriage her father had arranged between her and a son of a friend in Barrow. Violence on the part of the young husband drives her into the wild; her goal is to reach a port town and sail to meet her pen pal Amy, who lives in San Francisco.

The third part tells of how her dreams of American civilization, symbolized by her friend Amy's pink room, are shattered by a new act of violence; this time against the wolf she has come to think of as a father. Is American civilization really so civilized after all? The final decision she has to make does not fall along simple black-and-white lines, just as the real-life balance between traditional and modern civilization is not an easy one for today's Eskimos to come to terms with.

This book is a difficult one to review in some ways. Miyax's character is beautifully drawn, and the wolves and the stunning Alaskan environment qualify as characters in their own right in this book. Miyax is so distinctively Eskimo, composing songs to the wolves and skinning caribou with her ulu, and yet so universally a young girl. I can picture some children loving this book and others being put off just because it is so unique.