Yuit

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Because animal stories are popular with the early middle-school crowd,
Yuit, the story of Liak, a 10-year-old Inuit girl from the Northwest
Territories, and her pet ringed seal pup, Yuit, will definitely find a
readership even though elements of the book’s swiftly moving plot push
the limits of credibility. Liak’s adventures commence when she wants
to keep an orphaned seal pup. Her traditional grandfather explains that,
because the pink-eyed animal is albino, an Inuit symbol of bad luck,
Liak’s action could anger the sea goddess, Nuliajuk, and lead to the
people’s starvation. Having utilized her knowledge of her
grandfather’s love to overcome his objections, Liak fares less well in
the Inuit encampment, where the group’s Angatkok (shaman) banishes her
for disobeying her elders and threatens to have her killed should the
pup not be gone before dark. Taking Yuit, the exiled Liak journeys to
the Spence Bay settlement, where all ends perhaps too well, with Liak,
suddenly prepared to become a “modern” Inuit, going to school and
working for wages while Yuit finds a home at the local marine biology
research station.

Less credulous readers might question some plot happenings, especially
those occurring during Liak’s Spence Bay flight when Yuit acts more
like a dog than a seal pup as she attacks a marauding polar bear and
later “asks” to be harnessed to a sleigh carrying Liak. The
publisher’s failure to include information about the author limits
readers in gauging how much credence to give to the plot-imbedded
information concerning Inuit customs. Recommended with reservations.