I’ve always been fascinated with remote places. When I’m procrastinating at my desk, I sometimes bring up Google Maps and zoom in on cold, distant islands, dense jungles, or vast deserts, trying to imagine the landscape and the lives of the few who live there. For a while, I wrote a social media post each day about a different remote island and its sometimes strange history. I love imagining places and researching them to understand them.
I also love a good adventure story, and for armchair adventurers like me, there are few adventure stories better than Ernest Shackleton and crew’s journey to Antarctica aboard the Endurance. Their ship got stuck in the ice in 1915, leading to hardship and heroism almost too crazy to believe. You can see a timeline of Shackleton’s journey here: https://www.swoop-antarctica.com/shackleton-endurance/
Frank Hurley/Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge/Getty Images
G. Neri went on his own adventure to Antarctica and thankfully did not get stuck in the ice. Neri is the Coretta Scott King Honor-winning author of many books for children, including Concrete Cowboy, which was made into a movie starring Idris Elba. He’s written biographies of Johnny Cash, Simon & Garfunkel, Harper Lee and Truman Capote, and the artist Cristo. He also happens to live in my neighborhood here in Florida!
Neri visited the cold continent as part of a National Science Foundation program for artists and writers. He got to hang out with scientists and researchers, not to mention penguins and seals. He got to climb down a tube to view the ocean under the ice. He took a helicopter over the endless white landscape and camped next to a glacier. He learned a lot while living out his childhood dream of being an explorer. And then he came back and wrote a book about it.
My Antarctica is written for kids but appeals to anyone with a childlike wonder of nature and adventure. It’s a gorgeous book, filled with postcard photos, two-page spreads, Neri’s words (sometimes in voice balloons), and illustrator Corban Wilkin’s drawings cleverly superimposed on the photos throughout. You’ll learn about the life and landscape of Antarctica and the research community at McMurdo Station, where Neri stayed. There’s a great section of lists of things Neri encountered during his stay, including Sports and Recreation, Toilets of Antarctica, and “Weird Things” he saw. The book is a lot of fun to read, and it’s a keeper—a beautiful coffee table book to flip through while you sip hot chocolate by the fire, proving once again that you can travel the world (and beyond) with a good book.
Check out his G. Neri’s website here: https://www.gregneri.com/. There are links to order his books. Happy exploring!
Leave a Reply