A Place For Delta is an amazing, educational adventure story for youth aged 9 to 12 set against an Alaskan backdrop. This young adult fiction tale is one of the best stories we’ve read here in a very long time. For a couple of weeks I’ve been reading this book out loud to my daughters, aged 8 and 6, and they have been captivated from start to finish. And you know that thing where your brain wanders sometimes to adult stuff while reading kids books out loud, well none of that happened to my brain with this story. In fact I might even be a bit smarter from reading it. Delta is a baby polar bear and this is the story of the people who find her and help nurture her, in the process, also helping to solve the crime of who shot the bear cub’s mother. It is insightful and educational. It is relevant, at times dealing with topics such as global warming, Alaskan oil drilling and environmental threats to animals such as polar bears. A Place For Delta is well written, and contains just the right amount of suspense to drive the plot forward. The story begins in Georgia many years prior, when a young brother,  Ben, his sister Kate and their mother, Lisi, move to an old farmhouse with many acres of land. We are told Lisi has taken a job at a college nearby and her children are explorers venturing out onto their new property tracking footprints and scat, in search of wildlife. They are pioneering in spirit, both animal and nature-lovers. As young children, Ben and Kate are daring. They have several close calls with bears and snakes. But these are smart savvy kids, without need of rescuers. Fast forward, many years later and the children are grown. Ben has a son named Joseph. Kate is employed at a research station in Alaska when news of an orphaned polar bear comes to light. She is busy with research, but also needing to help hand-feed and socialize a polar bear and she quickly asks her nephew Joseph, 11, to come to Alaska to help raise the bear. What follows is an amazing cultural adventure and a mystery as well. Joseph becomes friends with Ada, a young Eskimo girl, and together the two spy on locals and tourists to uncover the truth. At times, while reading this, I felt it to be the same kind of timeless classic like Charlotte’s Web that can be read over and over, treasured and passed down through families. A good book, read together with children, can cement bonds, raises important issues, help encourage character development and nurture creativity. A Place For Delta was a joy to share and I suspect that’s how my children felt to when it ended and they asked to read it all over again. I will treasure A Place For Delta, a savvy intelligent book that encourages children to be smart and resourceful while taking ownership of the world around them. This story is wholesome and contains many biology and geography lessons. Walker was a professor of English at the University of New Orleans, and is an advocate for civil rights and wilderness. She makes Alaska fascinating. She is the author of Reading The Environment and Living on Wilderness Time: 200 Days Alone in America’s Wild Places. She lives with her husband Jerome in Atlanta and spends summers in Alaska. Richard Walker is a nurse and artist. His illustrations are quite lovely and timeless. The jacket blurb for Delta indicates it is the first of a series of books for children. We will wait anxiously for the second installment in the series.
Melissa Walker, A Place For Delta, illustrated by Richard Walker, $16.95 US, Whale Tale Press
released today June 1, 2010. Thriftymommastips rating $$$$$ out of $$$$$. Loved it. I don’t think I’ve ever given perfect $$$$$’s before. My eldest has told every child at her school about this amazing new book called A Place For Delta and my youngest has asked all of her teachers if they’ve ever read it. One night she stated: “I would like 100 copies of that book.”

Thriftymommastips is not paid to review books, but receives a free copy to read from the publisher.