Angela’s Glacier

Scott (My Baba’s Garden) writes of a relationship that grows between a child and a wonder of the natural world: a glacier, Iceland’s Snæfellsjökull. Though it’s covered in clouds in the days before Angela’s birth, the glacier emerges “peacock indigo and duck-egg blue under the milky Arctic sunlight” as her father holds his infant daughter up to see it. “I will take you there,” he promises, and he does, carrying her on his back, and chanting the glacier’s name to the beats of his own stride. Painting loosely in digitally finished gouache watercolor that foregrounds the striated landscape, its wildlife, and the pale-skinned family, Sudyka (Little Land) portrays Angela’s solo visits to the glacier over the years: “She listened to the temperature,” feels its contours with her hands, and whispers to it. But as she grows older, “school,/ friends,/ violin,/ soccer,/ bike rides,/ homework” steal her attention away, and the lack of visits make her heart sound strange to her. Then a journey up the glacier inspires a new vow, one that binds the glacier’s name to her heartbeat. It’s a deeply felt portrait of nature and self made more urgent by back matter that discusses the possible imminence of the glacier’s disappearance. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. Illustrator’s agent: Andrea Morrison, Writers House. (Jan.)