Very Last First Time

William Blackburn is a professor of English at the University of
Calgary.

As any osteopath can tell you, skin is very nice — but the bones are where it’s at. Even if it had nothing else going for it, Very Last First Time would have the bones of the old tale of trial-by-ordeal in its favour. Happily, there is more than that to this solid and unpretentious little story of one day in the life of Eva, an Inuit girl who lives on Ungava Bay. For the very first time, she is to be allowed to join her mother in the serious adult pursuit of gathering shellfish — beneath the sea ice, at low tide. Easily distracted by all the things to touch and explore under the ice, Eva mistakes her way and becomes lost in the dark. Fighting her rising panic Eva remains calm and regains her ice-hole only moments before the incoming tide would have drowned her.

Unlike so many of its competitors, Very Last First Time manages to be Canadian without offense; Eva’s story might have come, mutatis mutandis, from the outback of Australia or the subways of Manhattan. Tastefully enhanced by Ian Wallace’s splendid colour illustrations, Very Last First Time is a simple story with good bones and clean lines, a book we can give our children without apology or embarrassment.