Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews (1985) scared me to death. Eva is an Inuit who lives in northern Canada; "ever since she could remember she had walked with her mother on the bottom of the sea." What?! This is the story of the very special day in which she would walk on the bottom of the sea all by herself. Again, I say, what?! Eva and her mother bundle up warmly, and each pull a small sled that holds a shovel, a long ice-chisel, and a musel pan. They walk to the shore when the tide is out. They dig a hole in the thick sea ice, and Eva goes down into the hole alone. Eva lights candles in order to see the mussels she collects. Readers get a brief tour of the sea bottom. Then, Eva hears the lap, lap of waves. The tide is coming in. Her candles are burning down, and she looks for the mussel pan she left behind when she went exploring. As she climbs out of the ice hole, I'm a little unsure if she will do this again alone. Illustrations by Ian Wallace shows the eerie underwater landscape and Eva's expressions of resolve and fear.
