Snowhook

Hannah, 14, is miserable being stuck at her family’s winter cabin while she misses out on all of the things her friends are doing in the city. When her father’s military unit is called up to help fight the ice storm in Quebec, he leaves Hannah, her mother, and her sister alone at the cabin. At first, it seems like a great opportunity to practice the survival skills she’s been learning, but that changes when her mother’s insulin supply is accidentally destroyed. Desperate to help her mother, and having no means of reaching the outside world, Hannah sneaks away with the four family dogs tied to an old dogsled. If she can make it to the neighbouring cabin, she can use the satellite phone and get help. But when all doesn’t go as planned, Hannah will need all of her skills to get help before she freezes to death in the storm.

Sudbury author Jo Storm’s middle grade novel is an absorbing survival story set in the midst of a winter storm. Hannah is a resourceful and intelligent character. She enjoys practicing dogsleding and learning survival skills, but she also feels like she’s falling behind her city activities, such as ballet and having fun with her friends. Like any typical 14-year-old, she also feels like her mother doesn’t get it, and she is tired of being treated like a child.

After one such argument, Hannah is horrified when she accidentally breaks her mother’s insulin supply and is convinced that it’s up to her to fix it. She knows that the neighbour a few kilometres away has a phone, and she has enough skill to make it to her cabin to call for help. This is when everything starts to go wrong. What Hannah hadn’t counted on was that the neighbour would be in the middle of a PTSD attack and wouldn’t be of any help, nor did she anticipate having to pick up her 16-year-old nephew Peter who fights her at every step.

The author’s knowledge of dogsleding and survival is evident in the story, and she does a good job of incorporating technical details into the story. The dogs are also a highlight of the story, and the author did a great job giving them each distinct personalities.

There were, however, some problems with the story, beginning with the catalyst for Hannah’s journey. While it’s completely logical that a bad storm would make car travel unsafe and result in a loss of power and phones, it also doesn’t make sense that the family wouldn’t have an alternate means of communication, such as a satellite phone, especially given that the father is in the military. It also seemed unrealistic that the mother wouldn’t have some extra insulin at the cabin, especially knowing that storms could result in their having to stay longer than anticipated or being stuck without outside access for a period of time.

While Hannah is resourceful and clearly has some survival skills, she also seemed oddly lacking in basic survival skills, such as not knowing how to make a fire. The city/country contrast that the author tries to draw between her and Peter also doesn’t work. Their constant fighting seems more like created conflict than an illustration of their contrasting skills. Neither character was particularly likeable, and they often seemed far younger than their stated ages. Their rescue also felt convenient and easy

Despite these flaws, the plot of Snowhook moves quickly, and the author does a good job of creating conflict and tension. As the story progresses, their situation becomes more perilous, and kids will definitely appreciate the unexpected dangers that they face and their ability to think on their feet.

Overall, there are a lot of interesting elements to Snowhook, and kids who enjoy survival stories or dog adventure stories such as Call of the Wild will enjoy this book.