Skating Wild on an Inland Sea

Starred review from October 2, 2023
Striking, light- and shadow-filled winter landscapes by Stewart accompany evocative prose poetry by Pendziwol in this engrossing picture book. Lake Superior—a “vast inland sea”—makes a cracking noise, “the song of water/ held captive by winter.” Hoping to “sing with Superior, too,” the book’s young narrator and another child venture out to skate. Inside a small house seen in the blue of dawn, the children wonder at breakfast whether another sound they hear is “the wailing wind—or is it a wolf?” It’s the wind, they decide, before bundling up. In silkscreen-like digital spreads, the light next turns lemony, casting long shadows on the snow, where the two find wolf-prints, though the narrating child senses the animal “is long gone.” Lacing their skates, the two are soon on the ice, seen from above, then from below, in this adults-free vision of life lived in harmony with the wild. The children’s skin tones mirror the hue of the pages’ changing light. Ages 3–6.

November 1, 2023
"Listen! / Lake Superior / sings a winter song." Getting all bundled up, two children set off early on a cold morning to go ice skating. Fog rises from mysterious Superior, and along the way they find wolf tracks, but the older sibling can tell that the tracks are old, a "story" written in the snow. Canadian author Pendziwol writes evocatively about the immense and imposing lake and the sounds the ice makes vibrating under the children's feet as they skate: "mysterious magical music / as old as the earth... / We join the song, / skating / on the wild ice / of a vast / inland sea." (She also makes sure to mention that the ice on the lake is very thick.) Illustrator Stewart uses a range of blues and greens, from the intense turquoise of the frozen lake to a chilly blue against the snowy whites. His technique of drawing digitally, editing in Photoshop, and adding textures with scanned screens gives the book a vibrant and often majestic feel, ending with a wolf looking straight at the reader. Susan Dove Lempke

(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)