Coquitlam Public Library

Trapped in ice, Eric Walters

eng

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no index present

Ages 8 to 12

novels

Trapped in ice

Eric Walters

Thirteen-year-old Helen is not entirely sure she is looking forward to spending the next six months aboard the Karluk, a ship headed on an Arctic expedition. But with the recent death of her father, it is the only work her seamstress mother can find. Helen's ten-year-old brother Michael is delighted to be off on a real adventure, but neither he nor Helen realizes just how extraordinary this trip will be. The ship's hard-bitten captain, Robert Bartlett (who brought the explorer Robert Peary to the North Pole), must use all his seafaring skill when the Arctic Ocean begins an early freeze-over and the ship becomes trapped in the ice. But will his knowledge of the unpredictable and treacherous Arctic be enough to save his passengers? In the pages of her diary, Helen records the fate of the crew and her family as they leave the ship and try to make their way across the shifting ice floes, through blinding blizzards and past hungry polar bears to safety on solid land. And as the trek proceeds, Helen learns a few things about her family, about friendship and about a remarkable strength she never knew she possessed. Based on true events surrounding the ill-fated Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913

juvenile