Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Taking her five-year-old daughter on ambitious back-packing adventures in the White Mountains of New Hampshire earned author Ellis Herr flak from her blogging audience as well as an enormous sense of accomplishment. In fact, as she recounts in this charming, uplifting account, Ellis Herr and her daughter, Alex, climbed all 48 of New Hampshire's highest (4,000-plus feet) peaks from 2008 to 2009 to become members of the Four Thousand Footer Club, sponsored by the Appalachian Mountain Club. Alex was a super-charged kid with a lot of stamina; the daughter of notable climber Hugh Herr, whose frozen legs were amputated at age 17 in 1982 after he and a friend were lost for three days in a snowstorm while climbing Mount Washington, Alex rarely complained, but learned to be cautious while climbing and employ safety techniques enforced by her mother. Braving the elements, especially the rotting snow in spring, sudden storms, and aggressive grouse, and ignoring criticism by importunate fellow climbers who questioned Ellis Herr's intentions in taking her daughter up the mountains ("A little girl like you shouldn't be trying to hike such a big, grown-up mountain," they were told), Ellis Herr and Alex spent a happy year and a half scaling the peaks, recording their treks, and silencing the critics. Would people have wondered at their feat if Alex had been a boy? Ellis Herr wonders, rendering this a keen feminist fable for brave girls. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A mother and her young daughter bond through hiking. When Herr and her husband bought a weekend home in the mountains, the author learned of the Four Thousand Footer Club, a group of "peakbaggers" who have climbed all 48 mountains in the New Hampshire Whites, whose summits rise above 4,000 feet. She proposed to her 5-year-old daughter Alex, a precocious and energetic nature lover, that they attempt the club together, and she immediately agreed. The author clearly states her parenting philosophy--"children should be met where they're at, intellectually and otherwise"--and she presents her daughter as a fully formed person with her own capabilities and goals that drive her enterprise, rather than as a cute little body along for the ride and some comic relief. Like most nature-adventure memoirs, this one leverages ready-made life metaphors, which Herr captures effectively and sincerely, if a bit predictably. Herr divides the chapters into life lessons learned from experiences on the trail: "Know What You're Getting Into," "Ignore the Naysayers," "Mistakes Have Serious Consequences," etc. The latter chapter, about how Herr's husband lost his legs to frostbite from being trapped for three days in subzero temperatures (see Alison Osius' Second Ascent for the full story), lends additional weight to the story. After 15 months of peakbagging, Alex reached her final summit; by this time she was a minor celebrity in the local hiking community. Herr's prose sufficiently captures the joy of being on the trail, though perhaps not forcefully enough to make converts out of city slickers. More than anything, the narrative serves as an apt landscape for a mother to reflect on her choices and on her struggle with how to explain life's unfairness (sexism, cruelty of nature, distrust of strangers) to her daughter while continuing to nurture the innocent joys of fleeting childhood. Warmly ruminative and honestly observant. Witty, unforced humor rescues passages that might be boring in another writer's hands.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
