I chose Winterdance to read for a summer assignment for high school. I actually liked it as much as I thought I would. If you love dogs and adventure than this is a very good fit for you!

I really liked reading about how Gary, the main character, gets to know his dogs. My favorite part of their bonding experience was when he had to sleep with them outside instead of in the cabin, while they were training. One training day the sled dogs ran into six skunks and Gary ended up being sprayed in the face by every single one of them. When he returns home his wife tells him to sleep with the dogs. I love the how he bonds with his dogs even in the worst circumstances.

The author wrote this book to show us how extremely grueling the Iditarod is, mentally and physically. Gary definitely portrayed his topic very well throughout his book. He talks about the many struggles of being out in the wilderness and no sleep. He explains his adventure very well with many breath-taking adjectives and images. He keeps you tied in with his amazing experience of racing his dogs for the first time ever in the Iditarod. I would recommend reading this book because he is a good storyteller.

One of the weaknesses in this book would have to be that he took to long on the beginning part of the story, which was the training part. I would love to hear more about how the actual race went and about each of the dog’s personalities. If he had taken more time on the race it would have made this book even better!

I would recommend this book to teenagers that love adventure stories, dogs, winter, and Alaskan adventures. I recommend this book to teenagers because the beginning is a little slow and there are some swearing issues. This book was enjoyable to read because it was a realistic story about how a man and his dogs raced the Iditarod and grew closer together because of their struggles. I also learned things I haven’t known before. I know the tasks that you have to go through to finish this race with no penalty and success. Overall I enjoyed this book because I could relate to it. I really enjoyed reading about the beautiful scenery in the wilderness of Alaska and how Gary accomplished this extremely hard race.