Author: Leilani Raashida Henry
Publisher: Lerner Publishing

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

The photography and layout of this book are stunning, and the broad array of facts and stories—involving everything from penguins to the Northern Lights—is enough to entertain an armchair adventurer and science lover for days.

But what makes this tome on Antarctica really special are the interspersed diary entries from the first Black Antarctica explorer, George W. Gibbs. It puts you right there, on the ships, on the ice and in the bitter cold. The wonder, the challenges, the seafaring knowledge and yes, the racism, are a door to another era in Gibbs’ own words.

It’s hard to think of anyone who wouldn’t be drawn in by the photos, maps, sidebars, history and science, especially with that personal touch of Gibbs’ first-person observations tying it all together.

It covers what the crew ate and how they lived, and it covers volcanoes, sealife, crevasses, ice organisms, mountain ranges, sub-glacial lakes (400 of them under the ice in Antarctica!), fumaroles (icy towers), a meteorite-gouged basin and so much more.

It is a touch too “factoid” at times, on the “textbook-like” dry side, and yet all the facts are packaged in age-appropriate vocabulary for young adults, and given the layout, the surrounding photos and the other elements that break it up, it’s eminently readable. Like any great nonfiction book, it also includes a glossary and further-reading section.

Kudos to the author for this labor of love and tribute to her father.

-P.W.