One Summer Up North is a picture book guaranteed to delight the young and old alike. With sixteen beautifully rendered drawings, Owens takes the reader through a majestic visual vacation in The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Depictions of this small family of three, fishing, picking blue berries, hiking and canoeing are sweet and exciting. The reader can’t help but take delight in the central character of the book, the nameless child that appears on the cover. With characteristic childlike excitement, this character takes us through their adventure in the wilderness, spotting moose and loons along the way.
This is a perfect book to gift a young child. If they don’t already harbor a love for the great outdoors, they are sure to have one after pursuing these bright, fun illustrations. The illustrations are masterfully done, the trees of the forests alive just as alive as the little family trekking through them. Though there is no text to read, any adult will take pleasure in paging through this next to a child, or even on their own. —Eimile Campbell