The Snow Baby: The Arctic Childhood of Admiral Robert E. Peary's Daring Daughter (review)

Daughter of the discoverer of the North Pole and his very determined wife, Marie Peary was born in a hut in the north of Greenland and spent her first year in the Arctic; she returned on trips when she was three, six (a voyage that involved an unplanned winter in the Arctic), and finally, for her last childhood journey north, at eight. Marie certainly had some experiences that were atypical for a girl of her background, and her travels provide an interesting window into her father's exploration. The narrative bounces abruptly from event to event, though, and there's little authorial questioning of or reflection on the accounts by Marie Peary and her mother, which are Kirkpatrick's principal source material. Lavish use of photographs helps enliven the chronicle, though the captions don't always match up to the information in the text; there's no map of Marie's own travels, unfortunately, but there's one for her father's travel, though it's limited to only his polar journeys. While serious exploration fans will want to stick to classic Peary biographies, Marie is a sufficiently offbeat explorer to elicit youthful interest and offer a chance for some vicarious travel. An afterword describes the later life of Marie and the rest of the family; a bibliography, endnotes, and an index are appended.