My Wounded Island
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
There's an invisible creature in the waves around Sarichef. It is altering the lives of the Iñupiat people who call the island home. A young girl and her family are forced to move to the center of the island for refuge from the rising sea level. Soon the entire village will have to relocate to the mainland. Heartbroken, the young girl and her grandfather worry: what else will be lost when they are forced to abandon their homes and their community?
Addressing the topic of climate refugees, My Wounded Island is based on the challenges faced by the Iñupiat people who live on the small islands north of the Bering Strait near the Arctic Circle.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In pained first-person narration, an I upiat girl named Imarvaluk shares her concerns about the force of nature "that is slowly devouring our island." Working in mixed media, Arbona (The Good Little Book) pictures this unseen threat as a jellyfishlike creature that swoops toward Imarvaluk's Arctic island, and she uses delicately scratched lines to trace its sweeping tendrils and angry, hungry countenance. Halfway through Pasquet's story, his young heroine reveals what some readers may have already guessed: the threat facing this I upiat island is a manmade one, not supernatural in origin ("The climate is changing, the earth is warming, and this heat gives the creature all of its destructive force"). The care and tenderness with which Imarvaluk describes her home throws the consequences of climate change into stark relief. "What worries Grandfather the most," she concludes, "is that this creature will make not only our island disappear but also the memories of our people." A brief glossary, defining both geographical and cultural terms, adds a bit more heft to this environmental conversation starter. Ages 5 8.
