THE YEAR OF THE SEAL by...

THE YEAR OF THE SEAL by Victor B. Scheffer, illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher (Lyons & Burford: $14.95). Twenty-one years after its initial publication, Scheffer’s study remains a vivid depiction of the life of the Arctic fur seal. He follows an individual he calls the Golden Seal for 12 months as she travels from a rookery in the Pribilof Islands to San Francisco Bay and back, often spending weeks without touching land. The narrative is refreshingly free of the anthropomorphized sentimentality that mars so much nature writing: Scheffer stresses that seals live largely instinctual and repetitive lives, hunting for food, avoiding predators and reproducing. Although still threatened by various forms of pollution, including chemicals, plastic objects and drift nets, the Alaska fur seal faces a more assured future due to a shift in human attitudes: “Long valued simply as raw-stuffs of commerce, they are now increasingly valued as a wondrous community of life--a community to be treasured for its pure existence if for nothing else.”