Survival at 40 Below. brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

            I should start this blog off by telling you that I hate the cold.  I used to feel sorry for myself as an undergraduate when I had to walk from my car to the Wren building for class during winter.  There is something about being cold that bothers me deeply.  I feel that if it is cold, it should at least be snowing.  Yet here in Virginia, I am normally forced to deal with freezing temperatures and no snow.  Why am I ranting about the cold when I am supposed to be blogging about a nonfiction book?  Well, I read Survival at 40 Below by Debbie S. Miller (not to be confused with Debbie Miller!) and I found the book less than thrilling, perhaps because of my own prejudices against the cold.

            This book looks at the ways animals adapt to living in temperatures that are as low as forty degrees below zero in Alaska.  My favorite animal discussed is the wood frog.  When a wood frog gets really cold, its liver produces a lot of glucose that a frog then pumps through its body to protect its cells from ice crystals.  As Debbie S. Miller says, “when more than three-quarters of its body freezes, the frog stops breathing and its heart stops beating.”  Oh no, poor frog!  It must be dead, right?  Nope!  The author calls this frozen frog a “frogsicle” that will eventually unthaw in the spring to hop again.

            I feel like the structure of this book is very complex.  It seems simple, that the author is just talking about a frozen winter in Alaska and ends with the spring arriving.  Yet the author talks about so many different animals that I often get confused.  On one page alone, chickadees, gray jays, red squirrels, weasels, and brown lemmings are discussed.  I feel like this book could be a much better read-aloud for students and a much more interesting text if the author talked about fewer animals.   Despite my reservations about this book, the last line is nothing short of brilliant.  The book says “For more than two months the days will be endless, as the top of the world tilts toward the sun and the magical Land of the Midnight Sun explodes with life.”  I just love this line, and it leaves me thinking of a magical land where night never comes and a world where everything lives forever.

            The illustrations in this book remind me of the pictures that I see hanging in my dentist’s office.  They are wonderful illustrations, but that may add to my reservations with this book, since dentist’s offices only conjure up feelings of discomfort and pain.  There is very low support from the illustrations, as far as helping students decoding the text.  On the pages that speak of the wood frog, the frog blends into the picture so that the reader has to search for it.  The rest of the illustrations are landscape pictures of Alaska.  For some, these pictures may seem thoughtful and beautiful, to me they just made me feel cold somehow.

            This book has some good features that would be helpful for students reading this book on the own.  Like in many non-fiction books, a glossary is provided that tells students terms such as “carrion” and “duff.”  Debbie S. Miller also offers an author’s note that shows her love for animals and her hopes that students will read this book to learn to “understand, appreciate, and protect” the animals that she mentions.  I also like that a map of Alaska is included.  It shows where the arctic circle crosses into Alaska, something that I never actually knew.

            I know that I have had my reservations about this book, but it has been received well enough that Debbie is about to start researching her sequel, which will be called Surviving at 140 Above.  Who knows, perhaps I will like a book about the extreme heat better than the extreme cold?  Debbie S. Miller is a prolific writer about Alaska, where she has lived for the past 35 years.  Her books can be jumping off points for many science lessons, like her book Are Trees Alive?  If you want to learn more about her life in Alaska or any of her books (she also writes books for adults), then visit her website here