A classic story of an Inuit girl's first experience going alone under the ice to collect mussels.

Eva's journey is a very special one. Today, she will walk on the bottom of the sea alone. She will go into the cave that is under the ice when the tide is out. She will search for mussels as her people have done for centuries. She will find herself in darkness. She will find too she has brought what she needs with her. She will come again into the light.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.3
With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.5
Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.

Jan Andrews lives at the end of the road on a lake in Eastern Ontario. The plants and creatures in her Orca book The Twelve Days of Summer can all be found in her backyard. She has a love for the Canadian wilderness and, when not writing, can often be found canoeing, cross-country skiing, hiking or rock climbing, depending on the season. Jan has been part of the world of Canadian children's literature for thirty years and more. Her titles include such classic picture books as Very Last First Time and The Auction. She has contributed to the Dear Canada series through her book Winter of Peril.

An accomplished storyteller with a passionate concern for oral traditions, she has produced the folktale collection Out of the Everywhere. New Tales for Canada and set down the true story of Pa's Harvest as heard from another teller. She has a new book coming out in 2007 entitled The Stories at the Door—a work of rollicking fun and humour. Jan loves to do school visits and is prepared to travel widely to remote and urban locations. She gives teacher workshops and does conference presentations. Her specialty is letting her listeners know how much she cares about them.

She is the Artistic Director for two storytelling series and the Director of Storysave, a project for recording elders from the Canadian storytelling community for CDs and audio website. Somehow, with all of this, Jan has never quite managed to get her own website organized - although she keeps trying! She can, however, be reached at jandrews@magma.ca.

Jan Andrews' profile page

Ian Wallace has had a distinguished career as an author and illustrator of picture books, publishing many classics such as Chin Chiang and the Dragon’s Dance, Boy of the Deeps and The Huron Carol. His visual interpretation of Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot received three starred reviews and was named a USBBY Outstanding International Book and a Resource Links’ Year’s Best. He has won the Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Award, the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award and the IODE Violet Downey Book Award. He has also been nominated for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award and the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. Ian lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife, Deb.

Ian Wallace's profile page

A unique experience for young listeners and an intriguing introduction to another culture.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books