Blue Mountain

It's a difficult time for the bighorn sheep. Mankind's dwellings and roads encroach upon their habitat, and the wolf and the puma feed on their dwindling herd. But Tuk, "the biggest lamb born on the lambing cliffs that season and for seasons out of memory," has a destiny to fulfill: he must save the herd by finding a way west from the winter valley to "blue mountain," a place he sees in visions, a place that may or may not be real. Tuk is strong and armed with the stories passed down from one generation to another "so no trail is lost, no lesson unlearned." Tuk outsmarts wolves attacking by night by having the sheep leap onto machines, knowing that men use them only during the day. He's kind to a marmot that has just been insulted by a vain elk and receives crucial directions to a dry creek bed. He outsmarts a wolverine and a bear and faces the most fearsome of enemies, the puma. With its omniscient third-person narrator and mythic feel, the book celebrates the power of story and the beauty of the bighorn sheep's mountain world: "with the blue of the afternoon sky deepening to the color of crocus, and the daytime moon poised like a white dandelion ball on the tips of the trees to the south, and the wind blowing warm from the west…" Though the elk is vain and the wolverine proud, these are not cutesy Disney caricatures, and Leavitt doesn't gloss over life-and-death struggles as the sheep endeavor to survive. dean schneider