The Inuksuk Book is a brief but fascinating description of various Arctic inuksuit (the plural of inuksuk) and the roles these stone landmarks have played for centuries. The building blocks of a communication system, inuksuit can be guides, warnings, memorials, monuments, and human stand-ins. Combining the messaging capacity of totem poles and the practicality of scarecrows, inuksuit are a tribute to human ingenuity.

The Inuksuk Book is half print and half visuals. An introduction by Norman Hallendy, an internationally recognized inuksuk expert, leads well into a slight-but-adequate text by Mary Wallace, an award-winning author-artist. Good-quality photos of Inuit life come mainly from the National Archives of Canada and Nunavut Tourism. Colourful, full-page silk paintings by Wallace preface each of the book’s 12 short chapters and, in colour, mood and appeal, recall artist Ted Harrison’s northern paintings. A guide to Inuktitut words and their pronunciation, instructions for building an inuksuk, and an index are additional features.

Attractive for the most part, The Inuksuk Book has some curious design elements. The book’s acknowledgments, presented in the shape of an inuksuk, become confusing to read at the bottom. Some visuals underlying the text are so faint many readers may not even notice them. A colourful edging on some pages is so unexpected that I checked to see if the book’s pages were properly trimmed (they are).

Fortunately, The Inuksuk Book’s content far overshadows minor design difficulties. This introduction to inuksuk legend and lore will fascinate children who read independently. In the interests of promoting the book’s visibility and use, librarians may want to rethink the book’s 306 CIP classification and reclassify it in the 970s (under North American native people).