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Admiral Byrd of Antarctica by Michael Gladych

Another Messner biography, published in 1960, Admiral Byrd of Antarctica is a solid, decent read, but not as enthralling or inspiring as other Messner biographies I’ve read. Gladych characterizes Byrd, who explored both the Arctic and the Antarctic, as resourceful, persistent, brave and somewhat driven by a desire to do something important and noteworthy.

The most celebrated event of Byrd’s life came in 1934 on his second Antarctic expedition when he spent five months alone gathering meteorological data in a base station during the antarctic winter. He almost died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a poorly ventilated stove. He later wrote an account of his experiences when isolated and on his own in his book, Alone. Gladych quotes Byrd saying about his motivation for manning the station by himself:

“There comes a time in every man’s life when he should take stock of himself—sort of check on his navigation, so to speak. . . . You see, it has taken me a long time to get where I am today. And we are all like aircraft on nonstop flights, with time like precious fuel which we cannot replenish. God alone knows how much time-fuel I have left, and I’d like to check my course—make sure that where I am headed is where I should be going. I can do it best alone—out there.”

p.156

I don’t know if that’s an actual quote from Admiral Byrd, or a paraphrase of something he said, or entirely made up by author Gladych. However, while the idea of checking your course by way of an extended retreat is a good one, I think it could have been accomplished with less drama and danger, to Byrd and to his compatriots who eventually had to come to his rescue. But, then, what do I know about polar exploration or the compulsion to adventure and challenge the unknown?

Admiral Byrd was one of the most highly decorated Navy officers in U.S. military history. He also got all kinds of awards and commendations from various non-governmental organizations. But the fact that his wife, Marie, stayed married to him and raised their four children by herself for a good bit of their marriage seems like the best commendation of all. She must have seen something in him. He did name a region in Antartica after his long-suffering wife, Marie Byrd Land.

Some other books about Admiral Byrd and his adventures:

  • Black Whiteness: Admiral Byrd Alone in the Antarctic by Robert Burleigh. Picture book about Byrd’s famous near-death experiment in solitude.
  • Something to Tell the Grandcows by Ellen Spinelli. Picture book. Hoping to have an adventure to impress her grandcows, Emmadine Cow joins Admiral Richard E. Byrd on his 1933 expedition to the South Pole. I have this book in my library.
  • Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure by Richard Evelyn Byrd.
  • Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd by Lisle E. Rose. An adult biography of the explorer published in 2008.
  • Richard E. Byrd: Adventurer to the Poles by Adele de Leeuw. A children’s biography from the series by Garrard Publishers, Discovery biographies.
  • Byrd & Igloo: A Polar Adventure by Samantha Seiple. A narrative account for children of the daring adventures of the legendary polar explorer and aviator and his loveable dog companion draws on letters, diaries, interviews, newspaper clippings, and expedition records.
  • Admiral Richard Byrd: Alone in the Antarctic by Paul Rink. Original title: Conquering Antartica: Admiral Richard E. Byrd.
  • We Were There With Byrd at the South Pole by Charles S. Strong. Juvenile fiction set during Byrd’s first Antarctic expedition.

Exploring the World in Books

I am taking a blog break for Lent, but I thought I’d share some of my old posts from years gone by. I’ve been blogging at Semicolon since October, 2003, more than eleven years. This post is copied and edited from February 28, 2005:

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.
–Coleridge

I read Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya and thought it gave a beautiful, but very sad, picture of life in India for many people. It’s the story of a poor family, a fourth daughter who, because she has no dowry, cannot marry well but must settle for marriage to a landless tenant farmer who brings her home to a mud hut he built himself. Fortunately for the girl, Rukmani, her husband Nathan is “poor in everything but in love and care for me, his wife, whom he took at the age of twelve.”
Rukmani narrates the story in first person, telling of the birth of her daughter, the long wait during which the couple think they will have no more children, and then the birth of her five sons. The village where the family lives is on the edge of poverty and starvation; a bad year with too much rain or too little rain will push Rukmani’s family over the edge. Change and new economic oportunities come to the village; however, these new ideas and possibilities are full of danger too, for peasants who have nothing in reserve and are unable or unwilling to move with the times.
I wrote about a month ago about some of my favorite fantasy worlds. These fantasy worlds were first encountered on the pages of books. Then, there are historical and sociological worlds that I visit mostly in books, too. Finally, there is the actual world. I’ve never been to India or China or South America, but I have a picture of what life in those lands is (or was) like–again, from books. I think that Nectar in a Sieve, first published in 1954, will become a large part of my picture of India, along with missionary stories, the young man I met a few years ago at Baptist World Alliance Youth Conference, and other sources, such as the women I see at the grocery store here in Clear Lake dressed in saris.
Warning: The book has a bittersweet ending, but it’s realistic without being hopeless and depressing. Excellent.
These are some of my favorite books that have given me vivid pictures of the world. Most of them are fiction.
Around the world in books:
South Africa: Cry, the Beloved Country and Too Late the Phalarope both by Alan Paton
India: Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan, The Christ of the Indian Road by E. Stanley Jones, Boys Without Names by Kashmira Sheth.
China: Imperial Woman by Pearl S.Buck, The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang, Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin, other books by Pearl Buck
Antarctica: Troubling a Star by Madeleine L’Engle,
The Netherlands: The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
England (Yorkshire): All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot and all the many, many books I’ve read that take place in England.
Russia: The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig (And, of course, Tolstoy and Dostoyevski, although they’re more historical)
Israel: Exodus by Leon Uris
Hawaii: Hawaii by James Michener

Can you suggest any books that capture the culture and living conditions of a country in either fiction or biography? I do prefer and learn more from stories.

Interview with Author Andrea White

Andrea White is the author of three books for young people: Surviving Antarctica, Radiant Girl, and Window Boy. She’s also involved in community efforts to keep kids in school until they graduate, and she’s married to Mayor Bill White of Houston, Texas, which happens to be my home also. I emailed her these interview questions, and she very kindly took the time to answer. Enjoy.

Eldest Daughter says every good interview begins with the question: what did you have for breakfast? I like to humor her, so what is your breakfast of choice?
I never had pomegranates until five years or so ago and now I love them. I heap a spoon of pomegranates on cereal from the bins at Whole Foods.

I think it’s fascinating and kind of cool that the mayor of my city is married to a writer of children’s books. How did you get started writing children’s fiction? And the perennial question, why do you write for children and young adults rather than adults?
I wrote three novels for adults, never published, but found I was better at writing for kids. I’m only an average prose stylist but I have a better than average imagination. Besides, I love going to schools and talking to kids.

I’ve read and enjoyed all three of your published books, Surviving Antartica, Window Boy, and Radiant Girl. They all have such different settings: a future dystopia mostly in Antarctica, the life of a boy with cerebral palsy in the late 1960’s, and finally Chernobyl in 1986. What led you to these widely different times and places? Didn’t it take an enormous amount of research to get each setting right?
The truth is–you never know where you ideas will come from. When I talk to kids, I always remind them that ideas can start really small. Ideas don’t necessarily come in fancy, wrapped packages. Nor are they accompanied by a fireworks display. They can be just a flash of insight that will lead you to interesting places you’ve never even dreamed of. The idea for Surviving Antarctica took root after I read, The Worst Journey in the World, by Aspley Cherry Garrard. He was a surviving member of the Robert Scott expedition. I grew fascinated by the Scott’s team attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. When you write a book for children or adolescents, they have to be at the center of the action; and in a sane world, parents would never let their kids go to Antarctica alone. That’s when I decided to make up a new world. In 2083, public schools have closed. Kids watch school on television. History is taught through Survivor, Math through Dialing for Dollars and English through Tela Novelas. There are two moons in the sky, the natural moon and one that advertisers installed.
I got the idea for Radiant Girl, my most recent book about the Chernobyl disaster, from a photograph I saw on the Internet. The photo showed a girl on a motorcycle in the Dead Zone–where towns and families once flourished–and when I saw that picture of the girl I knew I wanted to write about Chernobyl. The inscription was, “As I pass through the checkpoint into the Dead Zone, I feel like I have entered an unreal world. It is divinely eerie like the Salvador Dali painting of the dripping clocks.”
With Window Boy, I was reading a biography of Winston Churchill by William Manchester. There was one sentence in the book that caught my attention. It said–Churchill had no problem standing up to Hitler, because as a child he fought the hardest enemy anyone ever has to beat–the despair that comes from being an unloved child. I decided in that moment that I wanted to write a book about Churchill. I didn’t have a plot, but I also knew I wanted to write about basketball because my son loves basketball and I wanted him to read my book. Then, one afternoon I picked up a New York Times Magazine and on the cover was a picture of a boy in a wheelchair. When I saw him, I knew I wanted him to be my main character. I had my plot when I asked myself what would happen if a boy in a wheelchair wanted to play basketball. If a boy like that had a dream that big, he could use an imaginary friend like Winston Churchill.

Your books are educational without being didactic. I think, having read some books lately that are oppressively educational, that education in a story is a hard balance to pull off. Do you think about that balance as you write? How do you keep the story the main thing?

I take it as a personal challenge to help middle-schoolers learn about big subjects like Chernobyl and Winston Churchchill. And to do that you have to make history come alive for them. A nuclear explosion would not be something that a teenager would be thinking about unless you mix some fantasy in with it. In the Ukraine, folk tales abounded. One story was about the domovky, or house elf, and I asked myself what would happen if the domovky warned the girl about the explosion.
As to research, I love it and want to tell the story as accurately as possible. And, that was not easy with Radiant Girl. When the explosion happened, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was not a transparent society, and even with an independent Ukraine, information about this catastrophic event is inconsistent and murky.
So I felt it was very important to go and see it for myself. I went to Chernobyl and met a wonderful guide named Rimma. Although no one is allowed to live in the Dead Zone, some people work there two weeks on and two weeks off, and tourists can visit with special permission. Rimma showed me many places. We went to the ghost town of Pripyat. We entered empty schools with lessons still on the blackboard and graded papers scattered on the ground.
She took me to that bright yellow Ferris wheel in Pripyat, a city near Chernobyl; it never had a chance to turn. Since my character, Katya, climbed this yellow Ferris wheel–so did I. (Or almost.) Let me tell you, never in my wildest dreams would I have believed that I would climb a Ferris wheel in Pripyat, Ukraine.
When I got back to Houston, I had a million more questions and I emailed Rimma, but I didn’t hear back. I made some inquiries and after several months found out that she had died of a stroke. She was a healthy-looking 46-year old. I don’t know and will never know if her death was related to the higher levels of radiation caused by the explosion; she was in and out of the Dead Zone regularly since it happened. Although my encounter with her was brief, I won’t forget her or her friendship.
I continued my research, but still had many questions about the Ukraine. Everything from–what first names should I use for my characters? What kind of cars did they drive in 1986 when the explosion occurred? How would my fictional family, Ukrainians who lived in a small village, celebrate Katya’s birthday? There were so many details I had to get right.
I was at a cocktail party one evening in Houston and ran into someone I knew; he had with him a woman with a lovely accent. I asked her here she was from—and yes, she was from the Ukraine.
Tetyana is a brilliant woman who is studying to become a doctor. She was a young girl living in Kiev at the time of Chernobyl. She remembered that day well. She said she still doesn’t understand it from a scientific standpoint, but on that day, the streets of Kiev went absolutely quiet. Even the leaves drooped.
Katya Radiant Girl
Her father was an employee of a government agency like FEMA, and he instructed her mother and her to leave Kiev and go to the countryside. Her father had to return to the Dead Zone, and just like Katya’s father he died of thyroid cancer from exposure to radiation. Radiant Girl is dedicated to Tetyana’s father and the thousands of others like him.
This is the picture that Tatiana drew of Katya.

And, of course, what can we expect to see next from Andrea White? (Whatever it is, I’m looking forward to it. I’ve become a fan.)
I try to write every day. My current book is called Time Cops. It’s about an academy where kids learn to time travel. Here’s the opening paragraph:

“The Zone, an invisible structure, rose several hundred feet above the Lower D.C. slum. Were you to strip the cloaking paint from the building it would appear as a series of spoked wheels, one atop the other. The base, constrained by a gray xiathium fence, widened above the fence line, then narrowed again to a tower that rose to a sharp peak topped by a sphere. External stairwells and crenellated walks linked each storey; the whole edifice resembling a medieval castle made of machine parts. A stranger, on seeing it, might think he had found the inner engine of a monumental watch ticking silently in the midst of squalor.
Of course, no one can see time itself. No more than any stranger could see the Zone. Anymore than he or anyone else could view what went on inside that monumental watch. A watch made up of Chronos operatives—the moving parts of the machinery. The guardians of Time. Monks. Fanatics. Worshippers. But they prefer Time cops or just plain cops. They’re on the job. For you. For me. For our children. Our children’s children. Through the centuries.”

Read more about Andrea White and her books at her website, Andrea White, Author.

Semicolon review of Window Boy by Andrea White.

Review of Radiant Girl by Melissa at Book Nut.

Review of Surviving Antarctica by Melanie at The Indextrious Reader.

Week 3 of World Geography: The Arctic and the Antarctic


Music:
George Frederic Handel—Water Music

Mission Study:
1. Window on the World: Madagascar
2. WotW: Zulus
3. WotW; Animism
4. WotW: Hinduism
5. WotW: Islam

Poems:
It’s About Time—Lee Bennett Hopkins

Science:
Scientists and Inventors

Nonfiction Read Alouds:
Trial by Ice; A Photobiography of Sir Ernest Shackleton–Kostyol

Fiction Read Alouds:
And the Word Came With Power–Shetler
Ice Drift–Taylor. I’m looking forward to reading this Arctic adventure story with the urchins. Taylor is also the author of The Cay, a wonderful story about adventure and racial reconciliation and intergenerational friendship that takes place on a Caribbean island.

Picture Books:
Antarctica—Bagley
Anarctic Ice—Mastro and Wu
Little Penguin—Benson We read this picture book about a three year old Adelie penguin.
Little Penguin’s Tale—Wood Betsy-Bee read this story to me and to Z-baby.
Take a Trip to the Antarctic—Lye
Little Polar Bear and the Brave Little Hare—de Beer Betsy-Bee read this easy reader to me, too. It’s a simple story about a polar bear who gets trapped in an arctic research station, and his friend the snow hare who rescues him.

Elementary Readers:
Julie of the Wolves—George
Woodsong—Paulsen. Karate Kid is reading this adventure/nature story.
Trapped in Ice—Walters
How Did We Find Out About Antarctica—Asimov
Amazing Penguins and Other Polar Creatures—Johnson
Torches of Joy—Dekker. Brown Bear Daughter is reading this missionary story about the Dani tribe and missions in the South Pacific.

Other Books:
Wheeler, Opal. Handel at the Court of Kings. Again, I wish I could find this series of biographies of famous composers at my library or at a used bookstore.

Movies:
Shackleton. Actually, we watched this dramatizatization of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic on Friday night, and it was great. Kenneth Branagh made a convincingly strong explorer/leader, and we learned a lot about the dangers and beauties of the Antarctic and about the courage of some of the men who explored it. There was a subplot about two women in Sir Ernest Shackleton’s life, one his wife and the other his mistress, I suppose. I couldn’t figure out what having both of them in drama added to the story, nor did I even figure out who the second woman was until three-fourths of the way through the movie. Why, oh why, do film makers add in such extraneous stuff and confuse the issues?