Bookmonger: Feeling the chill? – it’s nothing like Alaska

“Stubborn Gal” by Dan O’Neill, illustrated by Klara Maisch

“The Northern Lights” by Daryl Pederson and Calvin Hall

Nobody likes to listen to a whiner, so when I found myself complaining about the chilly temperatures recently, I sat down to read two books about Alaska, figuring that a double dose of the Far North would help me realize that we don’t have it half bad here along the Salish Sea.

“Stubborn Gal” is a children’s picture book by Dan O’Neill, who splits his time between Bellingham and Fairbanks. It is a true story, but O’Neill writes it with a homespun twang so that it sounds like a tall tale.

Sarah is the young and headstrong heroine who lives in Alaska and wants to prove something to herself. Impulsively, she decides to enter a 60-mile sled dog race despite the fact she has never mushed competitively before.

Her friends advise her to start with a shorter race, but Sarah is “stubborn as a stump.” Instead, she does a couple of practice runs ahead of time – that both end up with a tipped-over sled and a bunch of tangled dogs.

She enters the race anyway, and manages to pull it off.

Fairbanks artist Klara Maisch provides the illustrations for “Stubborn Gal.” While her color and composition are good, her heavy line work doesn’t lend itself particularly well to the figures in the story. Still, Maisch’s lovely landscapes certainly convey what it must be like in the heart of Alaska during a cold winter, and the story’s message about gumption and tenacity make this a book worth recommending.

The book is published by University of Alaska Press, and O’Neill will be at Village Books, 1200 11th St., to discuss “Stubborn Gal” at 2 p.m. Dec. 12.

“The Northern Lights,” published by Seattle’s Sasquatch Books, is the other book I picked up. Where I live, the lights from population centers too often interfere with the chance of spotting the aurora borealis, but over time I’ve managed to catch a few of these celestial shows.

Veteran aurora borealis photographers Daryl Pederson and Calvin Hall have much better access to the nightly show because they live in Alaska - Daryl Pederson in Anchorage and Calvin Hall in Palmer.

The northern lights present in many different forms, and the images in the book are spectacular – piercing shafts of light reflected in a mountain lake, a feathered greenish horsetail over a moonlit mountain, a ripple of lights above the Iditarod Trail, and marvelous captures of auroras in juxtaposition with the Milky Way, a comet, an igloo, or a moose.

An accompanying essay by Ned Rozell, who works for the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, explains the science behind the aurora borealis and discusses what scientists still haven’t figured out. Rozell also talks about how Pederson and Hall go about their work.

Don’t sit down and go through this book all at once – you’ll run the danger of becoming blasé about the subtle majesty of these images. Give yourself time to savor a few pages per sitting.

“The Northern Lights” conveys the unique and frosty beauty of our 49th state. It also reminds me that a little nip in the air is nothing to complain about!

This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 10:01 AM with the headline "Bookmonger: Feeling the chill? – it’s nothing like Alaska."