THE LAST CRUISE OF THE JEANNETTE

This story has been told -- thrillingly -- for adults. Here it is retold with a boy hero, a stowway, for boys. A great deal of data about living in the them uncharted far north is included, and the adventure is one of the classic sagas of the Arctic. The author glosses over -- unnecessarily -- some of the grimmer aspects of the story as if actually happened. But it is, in any guise, good reading. That ill-fated voyage, and the two years spent icelocked, and the disastrous overland escape at the end taught scientists much -- the painful way -- about Arctic voyaging. Given the scant preparations, the inadequacies, it was an extraordinary performance.