In alternating first-person voices, Vega and Deneb tell their harrowing story, engaging young readers while educating them about the marine ecosystem. Trusting her instincts and gaining emotional strength from contemplating the vastness of the sky, Vega knows she must lead her brother home and help save her surviving family.

Alone and hungry, the young siblings encounter a spectacular giant whale and travel briefly with shark-hunting orcas. To escape the waters polluted by shattered boats, Vega leads Deneb into unfamiliar open sea. Dispatched to find his missing sister, Deneb locates Vega in the midst of a terrible tsunami. When the baby sister she hoped would become her life companion is stillborn, a distraught Vega carries the baby away to a special resting place, shocking her grieving family. Invited to guide her family to their Gathering Place to hunt salmon, Vega’s underwater miscalculations endanger them all, and an embarrassed Vega questions whether she should be a wayfinder.

Vega’s matriarchal family expects her to become a hunter and wayfinder, with her younger brother, Deneb, protecting and supporting her. Young dog lovers will enjoy Fenway’s point of view, even if his eagerness wears a bit thin.Īfter a tsunami devastates their habitat in the Salish Sea, a young orca and her brother embark on a remarkable adventure. More books in the series are promised here’s hoping some new doggy dilemmas will emerge. But the jokes are used and then reused and begin to turn from funny into tedious repetition. Fenway’s first-person point of view is appropriately frisky, even slightly berserk at times. And finally, there is the issue of the big group of dogs Hattie keeps taking him to visit, with whom he must learn to sit in order to receive treats. Hattie is reluctantly learning to throw and catch a white ball in a big, fat glove and for some reason doesn’t welcome his enthusiastic help. The two neighbors next door, a couple of jaded dogs, don’t improve things. The backyard, which he perceives as an unpopulated Dog Park, is another issue, since nasty squirrels scamper through and Hattie climbs into a treehouse-squirrel house?-that he can’t reach. After losing his footing the first time, Fenway refuses to venture out there again, even if it is the Eating Place. First, there is the issue of the very slippery kitchen floor. The family’s move from the city to the suburbs just complicates matters. Fenway, a young, exuberant Jack Russell terrier, is having lots of trouble getting his “short human,” Hattie, to behave.

Fenway hattie