Frozen north
MICHAEL POLLARD
Ever since Jack London, animal life in the frozen north has been a popular theme for children's fiction of the less suburban sort. Ice King is in the now established no-holds-barred fight-for-survival tradition.
This story of a polar bear cub, Atu, begins with its infancy and leads on to its capture by Eskimos and subsequent escape, its return to the wild, and the search for a mate. The pattern is familiar, although the species is different; but what is also different about this book is that it is written for eight to eleven year olds, children rather younger than those who may be expected to survive and enjoy the harrowing classics of this genre like White Fang and The Bay of Seals. The rather savage ending, in which Tonda, Atu's mate, is shot by Eskimos, and her frozen pelt dragged out to sea by her sorrowing mate, may be too much for some readers to bear without distress.
This niggling doubt is itself a tribute to Miss Byrd's success as a narrator. Her writing is economical and her style enticing—a style, incidentally, ideally suited to reading aloud. Certainly, some moments of the story are so stark, and so sharply in contrast with the author's deceptive simplicity of style, that if the book is not read to children (and it is taut and unsentimental enough for the most reluc- tant parent) it should at least be read when adults are about. Most children will readily identify with, and be moved by, Atu's adven- tures. My only doubt is whether they may not be moved too much.
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