Shelf Awareness--Around Antarctica

PB Review: Around Antarctica

Around Antarctica: Exploring the Frozen South by Tania Medvedeva, illus. by Maria Vyshinskaya (Chronicle, hardcover, 48p., ages 5-8, 9781452172873)

Tania Medvedeva and Maria Vyshinskaya's wonderfully informative, beautifully designed long-form picture book follows Tom, a "top-notch journalist," as he joins an expedition to visit a research station in Antarctica.

A trip to this "mysterious frozen continent" requires warm clothes, but no visa because "Antarctica doesn't belong to any country." There's no military presence or mining, but there is a cooperative world research center, where "scientists from different countries share their research plans and results." Upon arrival, Tom learns rules designed to keep visitors safe, how the center itself functions (accompanied by a cutaway view of this bustling hub) and about different kinds of scientific research taking place. Meteorologists study the earth's atmosphere and ozone layer, a glaciologist and her team inspect ice samples, the oceanologists analyze Antarctica's unique waters and there are scientists who investigate the "more than 20,000 species of living things" that can be found here, including penguins, seals and "hundreds of different species of bacteria."

Reporter Tom's experience provides a continuity that allows Medvedeva to frame her work as a story while packing it with wide-ranging yet pertinent information. The detailed, colorful illustrations enhance and augment the informative yet playful text (such as a timeline of global explorers to Antarctica) and interactive nature of the book's design: a quarter-circle format that opens into a hemisphere with several gatefolds that open into full circles. Around Antarctica delivers a surprisingly thorough survey of this "harsh," complex "icy continent." It strongly conveys the usefulness in studying the area, as well as the need to protect it because, as Tom ultimately realizes, our entire planet is "a single organism. Beautiful, strange, mighty, harsh, fragile... and every action we take affects it." --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author.