Arthur Catherall (1906–1980)

God, I loved this book as a kid. It actually holds up pretty well, 30-some years later. The baby camel's travails are as nail-biting as ever; it's heartening to see the girl defeating sexist expectations in a non-didactic sort of way; and the main characters are pretty much all real people. Scenes of desert heat are an excellent way to while away a rainy cold afternoon in a Boston autumn.

A true-to-life kind of animal story, easy to read in one sitting. Seemed to me like the author knows animal behavior and the arctic region well. It’s about what happens to a young seal when abandoned by his mother at weaning time. After just sitting around wailing for a while, most of the seal pups gather together and travel to another area where fishing is plentiful. But the seal in this story gets left behind, trapped in an ice cave he hid in during a storm. An unexpected encounter with show more walrus and the Inuit people hunting them (called Eskimos in this older book) frees him from the ice cave, but then he meets other dangers. Has to avoid orcas, a polar bear, and another encounter with mankind. It’s really chance that saves the young seal from all these threats, some happy circumstances and a sudden act of benevolence by the people (who see the coincidental repeat encounters as a sign of something greater at work). In the end, the seal escapes back into the welcoming sea, where he is happy and relieved to finally meet up with the other seal pups. Nice little story with plenty of unexpected turns, depiction of arctic wildlife and their interactions, and a bit about Inuit culture. show less

A ship carrying several of the islanders is wrecked off the shore of one of the larger islands of the Faroe Islands. The islanders want to rescue them, and a teenage boy is sent to help what is thought to be a survivor swimming to the island. Instead it is a very hungry polar bear. What follows is an account of the islanders' efforts to remove the polar bear threat as well as to rescue their men. I got a sense of some of the geography of the island as well as the unusual nature of a visit by show more a polar bear in this story written for about a middle age audience. While the story probably fails to build action in the sense that more recent survival stories for young adult readers do, it is still a great visit to an island group for which few works of fiction exist. show less

A young English lad and an old Canadian trapper are left isolated and without supplies by a forest fire. The trapper breaks his leg, and while recovering, they are set upon by a wolverine. Fine adventure story, well written as Arthur Catherall's novels always are.

A 2008 two and half star review posted here might be for a different book, since the review refers to the boy's uncle. Such a character does not occur in the book.