“it’s a bit weird to be sitting in the Arctic Circle chatting to a fit boy with your Dad’s ashes in your backpack” Rory’s Dad was an explorer. Well, not literally. Literally he was a Geography teacher. But inside, she knows, he was Bear Grylls. And when he dies suddenly in an accident, Rory knows he needs her help to make one last expedition. With a plastic compass and Dad’s ashes at her side, Rory sets off in the footsteps of all the dead beardy explorers before her to get Dad to the North Pole. Before Mum finds out they’ve gone. A Hundred Words for Snow is about being an explorer in a melting world. It’s a coming of age story. With polar bears.