This very attractively presented counting book is actually two books in one. The counting book itself, with full-colour illustrations by Vladyana Krykorka, shows the Arctic animals in a hunter-prey relationship – one polar bear hunts two seals, nine snowy owls hunt ten lemmings, and so forth. In four pages at the end of the book, however, Kusugak writes a lengthier account, in a friendly, anecdotal style, of the life he and his family live in Rankin Inlet, among the animals of the tundra and the polar sea. These final pages are illustrated with vignettes in black and white. A glossary of special terms, such as “esker” and “pod,” concludes the book. While counting books are usually purchased for quite young children, the later parts of My Arctic 1, 2, 3 seem directed to a somewhat older age group.

Kusugak writes with intimate knowledge of the North, and from the perspective of peoples who have traditionally survived by using animals for food, furs, and skins. There is thus a tough-minded realism about his presentation of his animal characters as essentially links in the food chain; but kindliness and humour are also present, as when he shows a polar bear noticing some human berry-pickers and deciding “they do not look like very good meals.” The tender-hearted may find this book’s emphasis on predatory relationships somewhat distressing, although others will probably enjoy the implicit tension and drama. The illustrations, however, keep the hunters quite separate from their prey, and reflect the deep enjoyment of the landscape and wildlife that imbues the text. Like Ian Wallace, Ted Harrison, and other recent illustrators of children’s books about the far North, Krykorka depicts it as anything but a colourless wasteland. Her pages are full of life and motion, seen against a delicately detailed background of flowering tundra, tufts of dwarf willows, or blue-shadowed ice floes.