Shackleton's Journey

Shackleton's Journey
Written and illustrated by William Grill
Flying Eye Books, 2014. Nonfiction

In 1914 Ernest Shackleton lead an expedition to cross the content of Antarctica. The story of his amazing journey has been told many times but never quite like this. Grill tells the story with precise, succinct text, and amazing pastel and pencil illustrations. The illustrations contribute as much to the storytelling as the text, and a young reader could look just at the headings and the illustrations and get a pretty good sense of the story. What is more important, the illustrations capture the different moods of each of the major events of the tale. The pages that discuss assembling supplies for the journey are busy and cluttered, while the one talking about the isolation the expedition felt on the Antarctic snow-scape is stark and panoramic. This is a great new nonfiction for young people who love real life adventure.

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