Ice Drift

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About Ice Drift

Product Description The year is 1868, and fourteen-year-old Alika and his younger brother, Sulu, are hunting for seals on an ice floe attached to their island in the Arctic. Suddenly the ice starts to shake, and they hear a loud crack--the terrible sound of the floe breaking free from land. The boys watch with horror as the dark expanse of water between the ice and the shore rapidly widens, and they start drifting south--away from their home, their family, and everything they've ever known.Throughout their six-month-long journey down the Greenland Strait, the brothers face bitter cold, starvation, and most frightening of all, vicious polar bears. But they still remain hopeful that one day they'll be rescued.This thrilling new adventure story from bestselling author Theodore Taylor is a moving testament to the bond between brothers--and to the strength of the human spirit.Includes a map, a glossary of Inuit words and phrases, and an author's note.. Review "Ice Drift is . . . [a] page-turning tale of survival . . . a masterful and detailed look into a culture unfamiliar to most Americans, a gripping adventure, and a moving depiction of brotherly love."--School Library Journal "Fans of The Cay and novels by Jean Craighead George will enjoy both the intense survival detail and the gratifying conclusion."--Booklist — About the Author THEODORE TAYLOR (1921-2006), an award-winning author of many books for young people, was particularly known for fast-paced, exciting adventure novels. His books include the bestseller The Cay, Timothy of the Cay, The Bomb, Air Raid--Pearl Harbor!, Ice Drift, The Maldonado Miracle, and The Weirdo, an Edgar Award winner for Best Young Adult Mystery. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. THE HAYES ARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1860-61:One incredible ice floe covered twenty-four square miles. It rose twenty feet above the sea and reached an estimated depth of 160 feet. The estimated weight was six thousand million tons, a floating glacier, expanding year by year, as the ancient ice, hundreds of years old, remained frozen, fresh snow accumulating and congealing into new ice above.1Alika, hand on his harpoon, his unaaq, ready for an instant kill, had been at the seal hole, the aglus, for three hours. His younger brother, Sulu, who had begged to join him on the hunt, napped beside him on the sledge. They were on the west edge of a large, thick ice floe attached to land in the Greenland Strait, waiting for a shiny seal head to appear. The floe was old. Perhaps it had broken off from North Greenland and had drifted across the narrow strait, refreezing against the remote Ellesmere Island bank. The time was mid-October 1868, on the eve of the long winter darkness. The shallow noon light was already fading. Snow had fallen a week earlier and would stay until almost June. The caribou were mating, char were spawning, and the sea ice was forming. All over the Arctic, inhabitants, both human and animal, were preparing for the frozen siege. Jamka, the lead sledge dog, had sniffed out the small hole where he expected a ringed seal would soon surface to breathe, and Alika had prepared for the day's hunt by building a windbreak of snow blocks and a snow-block seat next to the aglus that he covered with a square of polar bear hide to keep his bottom warm. An indicator rod of caribou bone was in the hole. When a seal came up, it might touch the thin rod, wiggling it and alerting him. Many of Alika's elders often waited a day or two for just a single strike at the wily ringed seal or the bearded seal, the only two to spend the entire year above the Arctic Circle. But Alika didn't have the patience of his elders, and a worried glance at the snow-laden sky told him they should soon start for their village of Nunatak, which was seven miles south. A northwest gale was approaching. Alika could feel it coming, with its thick wind-driven snow. Winter weather was usually predictable eight