A prequel novella to the His Dark Materials trilogy. The story features on a young Lee Scoresby and his daemon Hester on a trip to the north where they first meet Iorek Byrnison. It is set more than thirty years before Northern Lights/The Golden Compass. This book is only of interest to those who have read Philip Pullman’s trilogy and is especially delightful to those of us who love the Lee and Iorek characters. I can recognise Pullman’s distinctive storytelling style; this little book had airs of his Sally Lockhart trilogy as well. The book also includes engravings by John Lawrence. I actually like engraving art and wish there was more of it now. The story is still full of fascinating things about the HDM universe; I always find the daemon idea fascinating. As usual, Pullman entertained and delighted me. Quick and speedy read at 95 pages.

Nick Hornby is probably one of my favourite authors. I like his novels; they can make me laugh and smile. They make me appreciate life, quirky observations, and also, what it’s probably like being a guy. I love his essays; he writes like a friend I would hang out with often. He’s probably funny as well. Slam is his first Young Adult novel. I’ve read almost all of Hornby’s works, and I think the only one that left me disappointed was How to be Good. This book was better than that, and I didn’t really know the plot going in other than the fact I knew it was going to be a book for young adults. The story revolves around teen pregnancy. The characters, were true to Hornby form, sympathetic, honest, and painfully normal in the real life way. I don’t know if I like this as much as his other great novels (High Fidelity, A Long Way Gone, About a Boy), and nothing beats his essays really. Still, I laughed and smiled as I usually did in this book, and I wonder what I would have thought about this book if I was still the age of Sam, the protagonist. If I was 16 or 18 going through this. It would have freaked me out a bit; I was already scared by other things back then. I would have liked it for the writing of course. Even now I can’t imagine going through this. I’m not ready yet, but it’s interesting to see Hornby’s take on the journey.

This novel by Jean Craighead George reminded me a lot of another Newbery Medal winner: Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell. Both young adult books feature young female protagonists forced to survive in the wild. Both books explore survival and the relationship between man and nature. I read this for the Book Awards Challenge; I chose it because I’ve seen the book cover for many years. The cover has left an impression, and I’ve always found wolves to be beautiful animals. I’d like to think that my daemon would be a steely, graceful wolf. Well, that’s what I would say to myself. One learns a lot about the life up in the Arctic circle, and the spritiual and practical lives that the Eskimo/Inuit have or had at least with the harsh climate.

There are often discussions about the traditional life and the new one. The book was published in 1972, ten years after Island of the Blue Dolphins and the same year as Watership Down by Richard Adams. I’m seeing the trend in all these books in regard to the relationship between man and nature, all discuss them to some degree and the essential human and animal values of survival in no matter any climate. They were published in a time when the environmental movement began to take the mainstream consciousness.  All of three of these books are also regarded as children’s books, but they hold universal messages about our links to the environment.

Julie of the Wolves is the first of a trilogy which I will finish. I did like this book, and the ending left me wanting. I usually finish the series that I start in any case.