By the time you read this review, another couple of hundred kilometres of age-old ice will have broken off the Arctic shelf and tumbled into the sea. Hunters in Pangnirtung, in the area where Arctic Adventures is set, say that the winter of ’07 was the warmest yet, with young seals falling into the water through the too-thin ice, and the Arctic floes shrinking drastically.

The menace of climate change lends an elegiac power to the reading of Arctic Adventures by Montreal author Raquel Rivera. But the book doesn’t need that extra frisson; it’s compelling on its own. Through the simple and effective technique of narrating dramatic episodes in the lives of four Inuit artists – two women and two men – Rivera gives us a taste of a vanished way of life, a sense of the unimaginable hardships that shaped these artists’ characters, and a glimpse of the work that grew so organically from their experiences on the land.

Each dramatic narrative is followed by a photograph and a brief, lively biography of the artist, plus a sample of his or her work. The approach works brilliantly. The stories are so immediate and pungent that the art becomes infinitely more accessible. Works that might have seemed perplexingly strange in style are instantly understood in the context of the stories; their magic and wit are released like fragrance from a warmed flagon.

The story of Jessie Oonark, for example, extols her skill at creating caribou clothing, tents, and kayak skins, a craft that was vital to her family’s survival. But after her husband falls ill and dies, Jessie and her youngest daughter are trapped on the tundra by famine and storms, almost dying of hunger in their iglu before rescue arrives in the form of an RCAF plane from Baker Lake. The drawing chosen to exemplify Oonark’s work is a portrait of a bright-coloured airplane with a human face, a spirited combination of traditional style and contemporary reality.

The handsomely produced Arctic Adventures is illustrated by Jirina Marton with oil pastel drawings of subtle and mesmerizing beauty. On the title page, a horizontal Arctic scene runs across a double spread: the vast blue landscape of ice, the pale immensity of the sky, the blurred round fuzz of light from the sun, and there, in the glittering distance – is that tiny, wavering streak of colour a hunter, sled, and dogs? Marton’s artistry makes the reader experience the uncertainty and thrill of visual discovery. Her impish Inuit children at play, her slouching sled dogs, and her eerie evocation of a shaman plunging under icy waters to discover a sea goddess are all magnetic. Best of all are her polar bears – massive and infinitely expressive.

Polar Bear, Arctic Hare: Poems of the Frozen North by American author Eileen Spinelli, with illustrations by Ontario artist Eugenie Fernandes, is geared to younger children. This version of the Arctic is more affable than eerie, and ever-so-slightly prettified in its cuddly polar bears and smiling beluga. Still, in these two dozen jaunty poems – each one with a page and picture of its own – Arctic flora and fauna are celebrated with energy and vibrant colour. “Thrumming and drumming/Caribou coming./Romping and stomping,/Caribou coming….”

Many of the poems are great fun to read aloud, and it’s a safe bet that small listeners will be attracted to these bright acrylic paintings, with their sweeps of movement and lush colour. Fernandes is at her best when she’s evoking realistic animal behaviour: musk oxen huddling together against the wind, their young peeking out from behind the sheltering adults; an Arctic owl, swooping toward the reader with piercing yellow glare, the painting somehow conveying the silence of its swift approach.

The last three pages of this appealing book offer a great bonus: nuggets of “Arctic Facts” about the animals and plants featured in the rhymes. Each snippet of information is paired with a thumbnail excerpt from the appropriate painting, and the facts themselves are amazing. Who knew that a polar bear, when stalking prey, tries to hide its telltale black nose? Or that sailors used to call the “whistling, chirping” beluga whale “the sea canary”?

Both books, with their palpable love of the North, are not only valuable in themselves, but also provide a provocative jumping-off point for a discussion of current climate challenges.