Good, Clean Fun

Antarctica #1:  Journey to the Pole by Peter Lerangis

Adolescent Historical Fiction

I really love Peter Leranigs, but this was not my favorite book of his.  However, I did like the book.  It was good, just not great and that might have been because I had just finished reading an amazing book, so my expectations were high.

It is a story of the race to the pole in the early 1900's.  The main character, Cole, is a young boy whose father is obsessed with finding the pole.  Cole's mother has died and his stepbrother Andrew is competition for the father's affection.  Cole thinks he can reconnect with his father on the voyage to the pole, until he finds out that Andrew is going as well. The voyage is filled with disaster and misadventure, both natural and man-made.  And, yet, it wasn't a knuckle-biter.  Perhaps I've read too many of these types of stories.  The descriptions of the adventure were really fascinating--to think what men endured, what they willingly volunteered for in order to conquer unknown lands.  It's very clearly a clean adventure story with nothing in it remotely inappropriate.  Just good, clean fun that has a touch more family drama than hair-raising adventure for this thrill seeker.

The book did have great information on that period in history and really shows what it might have been like to travel to Antarctica back then.  It's definitely a book for adolescents and has nothing in it to really interest adults.

It's part of a series, but not one I will keep reading.  It just didn't hold my attention enough to search out the others.