Other editions of book The Summer the Whales Sang

It's Vivi Aguirre's thirteenth birthday and nobody seems to care. Her Basque dad has left home and moved to Calgary, while her mom is going to Red Bay, Labrador to make a movie and is taking Vivi with her. To make matters worse the film is about Basque whalers in the 16th century, and as far as Vivi is concerned whalers are by definition bloodthirsty lunatics. But as she learns more and more about the long-vanished Basques, and comes to know the tough Newfoundlander who inhabit modern Red Bay, she reflects on her own family and on the pride her father feels for his heritage. By the end of her thirteenth summer, Vivi has learned more about love and life than she had in all of the previous twelve. Set against the historic and awe-inspiring background of the Labrador coast, The Summer the Whales Sang is a touching account of one girl who comes to know and understand her family, and herself.

Vivi Aguirre's thirteenth birthday wasn't turning out at all the way she wanted it to. Her father had just left home and her mother was insisting on taking her to Labrador to make a film about some old whaling station. What could be more boring!But once they're in Red Bay and Vivi starts to discover more about whales and the Basques who used to hunt them back in the 1600s, things start to change. Tiny old Gracie Easton, charming Marc Auger and even know-it-all Percy Morris force Vivi to come to terms with herself and her family. She even begins to understand her father and his fierce pride in his Basque background.Together the historic Basque whalers and the 20th-century Newfoundlanders teach her more about life and love than anything she has ever learned back in Ontario...and make this, her thirteenth summer, one she will never forget...The Summer the Whales Sang.