Ice Trap! by Meredith Hooper & M. P. Robertson
A great marriage of writer and illustrator tells the story of Ernest Shackleton’s polar expedition, the icebound Endurance, the months of camping out on the ice floe and the astonishing rescue which saw all the men survive. Text which is succinct but full of telling detail is matched by illustrations that make it all real to a child hearing this tale for the first time (or indeed an adult revisiting it).
It can feel as if we live in a different age, where adventures like these must be concocted because everywhere is already explored. Perhaps for some it feels that the virtues displayed by Shackleton and his men also belong in the past, the stiff upper lip world of the Boys Own Paper, but which one of us cannot be moved by courage, determination, patience, ingenuity or fortitude?
Endurance was finally located a hundred years to the day after Shackleton’s funeral. He died a comparatively young man. Perhaps his adamantine will that none of his men would be lost demanded more than his body could wholly recover from.
