Kathryn Lasky's Blog, page 10

More reflections on Portals

Portals from literature

The first book in my new series Tangled In Time is titled The Portal.  Recently not being able to fall asleep I was mental listing all the portals from literature I have encountered through a lifetime of reading. There is of course what I think of as the ‘mother of all portals’ the wardrobe in the Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe. And of course, the rabbit hole from Alice and Wonderland, but don’t forget the huge double windows in London through which Wendy and her brothers flew and followed Peter Pan to Neverland. All this got me to thinking about possible portals in my own life. I might have walked by these places never thinking of them as potential portals to other worlds but there was something about them that intrigued me enough that we snapped a picture. I’ll put them up one at a time.

So I’d like to share them with you. If you have a possible portal that you’d like to share send a picture to my website and I’ll put it up.

Bears of the Ice in Germany

The first book just came out

Is she Evil or not?

The mysterious, the unknowable, the all-powerful Mystress of the Chimes

Thank you Angelo!

It’s always exciting to see how an illustrator interprets your words in a novel. In my new book The Den of Forever Frost in the Bears of The Ice series Angelo Rinaldi, the illustrator, has created some spectacular images of the characters in this second book of the series. Watch for them over the next few days leading up to the publication on October 9, 2018

Booklist has reviewed The Den of Forever Frost

And they like it!

The Den of Forever Frost.

By Kathryn Lasky

Oct. 2018. 256p. Scholastic, $16.99 (9780545838085). Gr. 3–6

Bear cub siblings Jytte and Stellan, and their friend Third, continue their perilous journey to find their

father and the Den of Forever Frost. Aided by unlikely animals and insects, they traverse harsh terrain,

slide through ice tunnels, and evade menacing, venomous critters. A surprise encounter with Froya,

Third’s sister, causes him to question her trustworthiness. Meanwhile, their mother, Svenna, longs for her

cubs as she slaves for the Mystress of the Chimes, though she’s found a mission in helping the gillygaskins

(ghost cubs mutilated by the Ice Clock). When her cubs finally come face-to-face with their father, Svern,

they are distraught. How can this old, defeated bear help them maneuver the Den of Forever Frost and find

the key to the Ice Clock? In this second of the Bears of the Ice series, Lasky’s brilliant imagery of the

fantasy ice world and her believably strong, determined bears won’t disappoint readers. The final

paragraph brings sighs and silence as the bears contemplate the completion of their quest in the series’ next

book.

— J. B. Petty

What do these three things have in common.

They are the tools of my trade

They are the tools of my trade when writing the fantasy series the Bears of the Ice. You see I build fantasy out of fact.

So, the first item is the fur-lined hat, or a ushanka as the Russians call them. But I didn’t go to Russia I went to Churchill, Manitoba above the Arctic Circle in Canada to observe polar bears in the wild.

The second item is one of the seventy-five books I read on polar bears in which I learned about their biology, habitats, hunting strategies, mating and cub rearing, as well as many other behaviors. 

And then there is my dictionary of Inuit words. I often make up languages for the animals in my books to speak. I kind of take a real word from another language and give it a twist. In the Guardians of Ga’Hoole, the owls of the Northern Kingdom spoke Krakish that was a mixture of Norwegian and Yiddish. These bears of the Nunquivik speak a ‘dialect’ of Krakish that is a blend of Norwegian and Innuinnaqtun, an indigenous language of Canada and the Inuit people who live above the Arctic Circle.

 I don’t call this research exactly. I call this world building and I think of myself not just as a writer but a world builder.

Polar Bear Quiz

How much do you know about Polar Bears?

Polar Bear quiz

Questions

1) What color is a polar bear's skin?

2) What color is a polar bear’s fur?

3) How much does a polar bear cub weigh at birth?   

4) Who has a better sense of smell an owl or a polar bear?

5) How much does a grown-up polar bear weigh?

6) Will there be Polar Bears by 2050?

7) What are five countries in which Polar bears live?

8) How much blubber does a polar bear have?

9) How fast can a polar bear run?

10) What color is a mature polar bear’s tongue?

 

Answers

1) Black

2) The guard hairs of a polar bear’s coat are hollow and appear white but are actually transparent because of an optical trick in which the energy of light is trapped within the hollow tubes of the fur.

3) Roughly a pound, or 16 to 24 ounces

4) A polar bear can smell a seal from twenty miles away 

5) A male polar bear can weigh between 770 and 1540 pounds. A female about half as much

6) Two thirds of the polar bear population will probably vanish by 2050 because of global warming.

7) Polar bears live above the Arctic circle in these countries: Greenland, Norway, Russia, the United States and Canada

8) Four inches of blubber help insulate a polar bear against the cold

9) 25 miles per hour

10) Blue

Here’s a new video about The Den of Forever Frost

How I build these fantasy worlds

Come into my study to find out.

I will be appearing at the Southern Book Festival in Nashville

And signing books there too

10/13/18 Time 4:00 PM    Session Title: The Den of Forever Frost, Bears of The Ice #2   Location Nashville Public Library conference room 1A

Signing:  10/13/18 Time 5: to 5:30 PM

 

I went to the arctic to meet real polar bears

You can see the whole adventure on video

Bears of the Ice: The Quest of the Cubs is available in paperback

Now at a nice lower price