Smiler's Bones

Smiler's Bones is a novel for younger readers by the American writer Peter Lerangis, published in 2005 and based on a true story.

The book begins in 1897, when Robert Peary, the explorer, takes six Inuit from their homes in Greenland to New York and presents them to the American Museum of Natural History as a living exhibit. Two of the group are a father and son, Qisuk, known as Smiler, and Minik, and the novel follows Minik's experiences in New York after the adults begin to die and he is left in the city on his own. What happens to the bodies of the dead is the fact at the centre of the story: the museum keeps Smiler's bones for study rather than returning them for burial, and Minik grows up with the knowledge of it. Lerangis tells the story as Minik's own account of the years of being looked at.

The novel is based on an episode in the history of Arctic exploration and of the museum that housed the people Peary brought back with him.