Alaska's 12 Days of Summer

Best-selling Paws IV illustrator Shannon Cartwright is back with this charming children's book based on the infectious rhythms of the classic song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas.' Here, the famous 'partridge in a pear tree' becomes a 'black bear in a spruce tree,' while the fifth day of summer in Alaska yields everything from swans and wood frogs to bald eagles and moose.

Pat Chamberlin-Calamar has taught everything from music and English in Denmark to folk guitar and parent-toddler classes. She and her husband, Don, spend summers in Talkeetna, Alaska.

Shannon Cartwright arrived in Alaska in 1972 after graduating from the University of Michigan School of Architecture and Design. She has spent most of her Alaska years living in the bush, away from the road system, and has never owned a TV or a computer and communicates by satellite phone and US mail. Cartwright has traveled all over the state working on a set-net site in Bristol Bay, driving horse-pack trips, guiding in the Alaska Range and Brooks Range, researching book projects, and traveling between her cabins by train, skis, snowmobiles, and horses. She expresses her love of Alaska through the 28 children's books she has illustrated, seven of which she has also written.