Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

A barren couple moves to Alaska to have a fresh start.  The wilderness, they believe, will suit them. When they get there, they find conditions harsher than they expected. Instead of growing closer, the wilderness draws them apart, until they fashion a snowman. Instead of a traditional snowman, they make one that looks like a little girl. Mysteriously, a child appears in the woods wearing the mittens and scarf they had placed on their "snow child."

Will this child be exactly what the lonely couple has always wished for or is this girl a product of their exhaustion and cabin fever?


Their only neighbor, Esther, explains how this can happen in remote places like Alaska:

"...this isn't an easy place to get along. The winters are long, and sometimes it starts to get to you. Around here, they call it cabin fever. You get down in the dumps, everything's off kilter and sometimes your mind starts playing tricks on you...You start seeing things that you're afraid of...or things you've always wished for...Maybe it was an animal, or the wind. All sorts of explanations."


Mabel is certain, however, that she saw a child who can run quickly on the snow. The couple finds small boot prints that further convinces them of the child's existence.

Not wanting to get his wife's hopes up, Jack secretly leaves trinkets on a stump. He had baited deer in this way and perhaps he can get the child to reappear.  

Ivey adds just the right touch of mystery when describing this elusive child.

This lyrical novel is beautifully written. Though the child's terms are hard to accept, Mabel and Jack learn to let Faina live her life as she pleases.

Thought-provoking, this novel also is incredibly poignant. The childless couple discover that they have had a child afterall -- the wild sprite, Faina, is their child. In the same moment, though, they realize that they have lost her.

The novel which mirrors and amplifies the Russian fairytale, the Snow Child, ends sorrowfully, yet there is room for joy.

Book Discussion:
The Snow Child raises many questions and lends itself well to book discussions. What is a parent and to what extent must we let a child find his/her own way in the world? Are we controlled by fate or can we turn sorrow into joy as Mabel's sister indicates in her letter?

Why The Hunger Games Hits Its Mark

Some science fiction fizzles at the box office or fails to capture the public's imagination. In some cases, they simply miss their mark with audiences. Tron didn't find an audience until decades later. Despite spectuacular effects, John Carter failed because viewers did not buy the life-on-Mars premise.

The Hunger Games' novel and movie, a futuristic gladiator fight-to-the-death, hits it mark because readers/viewers want to think about the premise--that injustice surrounds us and pervades our way of life.

While people struggle to survive in District 12, a fence prohibits inhabitants from hunting in gathering the fertile meadow beyond the enclosure. Hunting with a bow and arrow or simply owning a weapon is strictly forbidden. Other districts are wealthy but they offer no help to the coal-mining district.

Even more disturbing are the gladiator-like games that happen randomly. The lottery system in which tributes are chosen for the games may remind readers of two things, the short story "The Lottery," and the system for choosing soldiers for the Vietnam conflict.

The novel is a critique of war and the effects of war. Perhaps even more than this it is a critique of the war machine, the military-industrial complex that profits from the wars.

The soldiers sent to war and the tributes chosen for games have ceded control. They are pawns. Everything that the tributes do is controlled. Balls of fire or other diversions will force them together to fight or force them apart.

Where is the resistance movement you might wonder? The Capitol and the government of Pandem are evil forces and sadly the winners become collaborators with the blood-thirsty Capitol by training the next batch of tributes.

Katniss does engage in small acts of rebellion. She places  flowers around Rue that shows she mourned for her. She refuses to participate in an unexpected rule change that would pit her against Peeta.

The novel/movie hints that the Capitol will make her pay for these rebellious acts and thus sets readers/viewers up for the next installment.