Being Caribou is a kids’ version of wildlife biologist and park warden Karsten Heuer’s adult book of the same name. (It is also the name of a related National Film Board DVD.) The children’s book outdoes the adult one in illustrations, but loses something of the magic of the story in its text.

Being Caribou is about a remarkable, possibly unique journey that Heuer and his new wife, Leanne Allison, undertook in 2003. For five months, they followed the 123,000-strong Porcupine caribou herd from its wintering grounds near Old Crow in the Yukon to its threatened calving grounds in Alaska and back. On the way they starved, froze, were hunted by bears, and began to develop an understanding of what being a caribou means.

It’s a dramatic story, and the photographs of people and animals set against the spectacular scenery are sometimes breathtaking. The text, though, is informative but curiously flat in places. In part this is due to sanitization of the story: a poignant scene of a dying caribou is simply presented as the beast trying to escape the pain of bot fly bites.

At other times, memorable moments in the trek are weakened by pedestrian storytelling. For example, the horrifying experience of being seriously hunted by a hungry grizzly bear seems like just another incident. Heuer writes, “Leanne and I were scared,” but gives us no real sense of their fear. Simply because the audience is young doesn’t mean that they can’t be made to feel the highs and lows of this amazing animal and human adventure.

The caribou calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are being threatened by oil exploration. Being Caribou will help make kids aware of what is at stake and give them a glimpse of an extraordinary part of the world and the lengths the caribou go to traverse it. It is an important book, but it could have been much better.