Beluga Whales, Grizzly Tales and More Alaska Kidsnacks: Fun Recipes for Cooking With Kids
By Alice Bugni with illustrations by Erik Brooks; Little Bigfoot; $10.99.
Description: This collection of easy, kid-pleasing snack recipes is inspired by nature as well as Alaska's geography and culture. Grown-ups and kids will enjoy cooking together and making treats like Gold Nuggets, Hot Lava and Woolly Mammoth Chips.
Toklat in Trouble
Written and illustrated by Libby Hatton; Alaska Geographic, $15.95.
Description: An adventurous wolf pup does not always pay attention to the warnings of adults in his family. During a caribou chase, he goes beyond the wilderness boundary of Denali National Park and Preserve and gets caught in a trap. A rescue saves him.
Excerpt: GRRRRrrrrr!
The sound was deep and fierce.
Toklat knew that growl meant "NO," the biggest sort of NO. "Do NOT go near the big boulder. Not now, not ever."
Toklat's mother remembered the bad thing that happened beyond the big rock. Two years ago, her brother lay still after a loud bang — and the strange smells of humans and gunshot filled the air.
Mother wolf barked "NO" again.
But Toklat always liked to think that "No" meant "not now, maybe later."
Mother led her pups back to their den near the Teklanika River in Denali National Park. There, all adults took turns teaching the pups.
When Toklat met a porcupine or licked a poisonous plant, or wanted to play with a baby bear, or wandered away from the family, Toklat's mother, uncle or older sister always woofed a warning, growled a deep growl, or nipped him on the nose.
Toklat learned to stay out of trouble — most of the time.
Noel Merrill Wien: Born to Fly
By Merrill Wien; Alaska Northwest Books; 2016; $19.99.
Description: Destined to become a pilot, Merrill Wien ended up flying 30,000 accident-free hours over six decades to become one of Alaska's most accomplished fliers. His father, Noel Wien, was a pioneer Alaska aviator and his mother played a significant role in the founding of Wien Alaska Airlines.
Merrill Wien flew an array of aircraft, including DC-3s, 737s, a B-29 bomber, a Hiller UH-12E helicopter and the C-46 cargo plane.
He recounts secret Air Force missions, glacier flying, the transition from the turbo-prop era to the jet age and how he and brother Richard started a helicopter company.
Excerpt: In addition to flying the DC-3, I also flew the Bush planes as often as I could. I did a lot of glacier flying for Wien and also did jobs such as support for mountain climbers on my own time. One day one of the Wien pilots, George Thiele, asked me if I would be interested in accompanying him in my Super Cub on a polar bear hunt he had lined up for a customer. Polar bear hunters always flew in twos in case one of the airplanes broke down or went through the ice.
George was a very experienced guide and in great demand. I had no experience as a guide and was keen to learn how to hunt polar bears. My brother, Richard, also wanted to learn so he borrowed George's brother's PA-11 Cub. We figured if two airplanes are good to have, three are even better.
We headed for Barrow with three airplanes to meet George's customer, who turned out to be cowboy actor and singer Roy Rogers and a cameraman. Roy flew with George, and I had the cameraman. Richard carried the extra camera equipment. We flew all day for about five days as far north as 150 miles from Point Barrow.
Finding polar was not an easy thing late in the season, even for an experienced track like George Thiele.
More Than God Demands: Politics and Influence of Christian Missions in Northwest Alaska, 1897-1918
By Anthony Urvina with Sally Urvina; University of Alaska Press; 2016; $50.
Description: Near the turn of the 20th century, the territorial government of Alaska put its support behind a project led by Christian missionaries to convert Alaska Native people — and, along the way, bring them into "civilized" American citizenship. Establishing missions in a number of areas inhabited by Alaska Natives, the program was an explicit attempt to erase 10,000 years of Native culture and replace it with Christianity and an American frontier ethic. Anthony Urvina, whose mother was an orphan raised at one of the missions established as part of this program, draws on details from her life in order to present the first full history of this missionary effort. Smoothly combining personal and regional history, Urvina tells the story of his mother's experience amid a fascinating account of Alaska Native life and of the men and women who came to Alaska to spread the word of Christ, confident in their belief and unable to see the power of the ancient traditions they aimed to supplant.
Excerpt: In our family, the reference to "Bertha" in Johnshoy's book "Apaurak in Alaska, Social Pioneering Among the Eskimos" was simply confirmation of a story that we had heard throughout our lives. My mother, Bertha (Eketuq) Cahill, remained at the Teller mission into her mid-teens, despite that soon after her arrival both sides of her extended family attempted to regain custody. I remember mom's account of how her Inupiaq uncle, Billy Patch, had traveled to the mission by dogsled in an unsuccessful attempt to take her home with him, and how her Irish uncle, James Cahill, had failed to persuade Reverend Brevig that he should have charge of her.
This had always been a mystery to me — that my mother had remained an orphan even as close family members demonstrated a strong interest in raising her. In our research, we have managed to solve this and a few other mysteries surrounding Mom's childhood. In the minds of early 20th-century officials like the Reverend Brevig, it was simply the right thing to do to raise Bertha as an evangelical Lutheran (though as an orphan) rather than allow her to be raised as a Roman Catholic in the home of her Irish uncle or, heaven forbid, as an Inupiaq by her uncle, Billy Patch. Such are the unadorned natures of religious sectarianism and ethnocentrism. However, for my mother, the decision that she be kept an orphan, despite the wishes of her extended families, eventually resulted in a root of bitterness that was compounded by a single tragic event.
The few stories that my mother shared about her youth were brief descriptions of her early life at the Brevig mission, and among those few stories, none was as compelling as an incident that happened not long after her arrival. Being a toddler, she had wandered too close to where the mission's sled dogs were tied. The dogs got ahold of her, and she was severely mauled. She recounted that an Inupiaq man, whose name she later discovered was John Anakartuk, pulled her away from the dogs. Otherwise, her only memory of the event was the image of one of the women who upon seeing the immediate effects of the mauling turned away to cry. My mother's scalp was badly torn, which left permanent scarring. But the greatest damage was emotional. It became her deepest belief that, if she had been allowed to go with her family members who wanted her, instead of having been kept at the mission as an orphan, she never would have been left unattended that day, and she would not have suffered the mauling.
— Compiled by Kathleen Macknicki, Alaska Dispatch News