• Age: 6 to 8
• Grade: 1 to 3

From the author of the bestselling Canadian classic, The Curve of Time, comes a story for children about a young headstrong orca whose recklessness lands him in a series of misadventures along the coast of British Columbia.

Henry is part of a pod of twenty-two orca swimming along the Strait of Georgia. As a young whale, Henry is desperate to prove that he can look after himself, but as his mother says, “Henry thinks after he gets into trouble instead of before.”

Sure enough, in reckless pursuit of a salmon, Henry is caught in the Skookumchuck Rapids, which carry him up inside a labyrinth of inlets until he finds himself utterly lost. As Henry searches for the exit, he comes across goats, tugboats, and seagulls—including Timothy Pinktoes, whose motives for helping Henry are suspicious at best.

With original illustrations and maps by Jacqueline McKay Mathews, A Whale Named Henry is a story that has captivated and delighted children since its original release in 1983.

M. Wylie Blanchet was born Muriel Wylie Liffiton on May 2, 1891, in Montreal, Quebec. She married Geoffrey Orme Blanchet in 1909, but was widowed in 1926, leaving her to raise five children on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. For several summers Muriel, her children, and the family dog set off in a twenty-five foot motorboat, the Caprice, to explore the waters between Vancouver Island and the rugged Canadian mainland. They were on their own, with Muriel as captain, anchoring in secluded coves to tramp the wilderness, examining architecture and burial grounds in deserted native villages, and meeting the region's various human and animal inhabitants. Muriel wrote about their journeys, and was successful in having articles published in magazines such as Blackwood's and Atlantic Monthly. In 1962, the year Muriel died, Blackwood & Sons of Edinburgh, Scotland published The Curve in Time, which described several summers of the family explorations. In 1968, Gray Publishing in Canada printed a second edition of The Curve in Time, and since then it has earned a reputation as a Canadian classic. In 1982 Harbour Publishing printed A Whale Named Henry, a children's story Muriel wrote for her family in the 1930s. Harbour has also published Edith Iglauer's informative profile of Blanchet in The Strangers Next Door.

M. Wylie Blanchet's profile page

Jacqueline McKay Mathews' profile page