The Call of Antarctica: Exploring and Protecting Earth's Coldest Continent

by Leilani Raashida Henry

Overview

Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, highest, driest, and most remote part of the world. It’s the world’s largest polar dessert. Antarctica is a true wilderness.

Author Leilani Raashida Henry, daughter of George W. Gibbs, Jr., the first person of African descent to go to Antarctica, recounts her father’s expedition while educating readers on the incredible geography, biodiversity, and history of the continent. Using diary entries from Gibbs' expedition, The Call of Antarctica takes readers on a journey to the rugged Antarctic landscape to learn its history, its present, and the importance of protecting its future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798765643310
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/06/2024
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	866,343
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	13 - 14 Years

About the Author

Leilani Raashida Henry is a facilitator/trainer, business coach, and education designer based near Denver, Colorado. She produces and hosts a radio show for the Connection program at KGNU, an independent community radio.

Editorial Reviews

"Older middle grade and young adult readers will find this to be a highly informative nonfiction text that will help both with research projects and with building a stronger understanding of the continent of Antarctica and its important role throughout human history." —Children's Literature

From the Publisher

2021-08-18
One of the coldest and most remote places on Earth is brought into the spotlight with personal warmth, thrilling history, and bitter truths.

Henry presents a treasure trove of information about Antarctica as testimony to her late father George W. Gibbs Jr.’s impactful legacy as the first Black man to travel there in 1940 onboard the USS Bear as part of Richard E. Byrd’s expedition to establish permanent bases and further explore and map the continent. Excerpts from Gibbs’ diary frame stories of other intrepid explorers, the extreme challenges of the unique terrain, and the evolution of technology and equipment. Still, the story of Antarctica is at times unavoidably disheartening, as the same anti-Black racism that nearly erased from the history books Matthew Henson, a free Black man that played a pivotal role in Robert Peary’s famed 1909 expedition to the North Pole, is a point of focus here as Henry narrates her father’s own adventures and the historical context surrounding them. Fatal accidents, the mistreatment of wildlife, and negative human-made environmental impacts are also covered in this detailed description of the continent and our complicated relationship to it. This is an accessible look at the bio- and geo-diversity of our planet that focuses on a particular space full of relatively new discoveries and with much more still to teach us.

Antarctica is undeniably cool, and this volume makes sure we know it. (author’s note, glossary, source notes, bibliography, further reading, index, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 12-16)

Kirkus Reviews