Shackleton's Journey

Well, here's a book unlike any other. Ernest Shackleton's heroic failure to cross Antarctica has drawn many chroniclers, but none like William Grill, a young illustrator who just won the Greenaway Medal (the British equivalent of the Caldecott) for this dazzlingly drawn account of the expedition. With well-chosen facts and a mastery of both large and small scales—one colored-pencil spread features a tiny rescue boat on a vast and rough sea, while another portrays and names all of the crew's 69 dogs—it's a picture book, but one that older readers and lovers of adventure will get lost in for hours and hours. (Ages 6 and up)