Buried in Ice: The Mystery of a Lost Arctic Expedition

Rating:
Summary: The Photos Alone Are Worth the Stars
Review: After seeing a clip on the Franklin Expedition in a documentary on mummies, I rushed to the library to see if there was a book on the subject. The only one available was this book in the juvenile section. At first I was disappointed, but, noticing a photo of the preserved body of one of the sailors, I checked it out. For a kids' book, this one is pretty cool. The first part of the book is a fictionalized (and very sanitized) story of life for the average seaman on the doomed expedition. This story leaves the reader with questions that the author will answer in the second section describing the disinterring of three buried crew members and the information their well-preserved remains revealed. The photos are amazing and make this book fascinating for all ages (I don't remember juvenile books being this cool when I was a kid). The reading level and, at times, disturbing content is probably appropriate for kids 5th grade and up.

Rating:
Summary: The Photos Alone Are Worth the Stars
Review: After seeing a clip on the Franklin Expedition in a documentary on mummies, I rushed to the library to see if there was a book on the subject. The only one available was this book in the juvenile section. At first I was disappointed, but, noticing a photo of the preserved body of one of the sailors, I checked it out. For a kids' book, this one is pretty cool. The first part of the book is a fictionalized (and very sanitized) story of life for the average seaman on the doomed expedition. This story leaves the reader with questions that the author will answer in the second section describing the disinterring of three buried crew members and the information their well-preserved remains revealed. The photos are amazing and make this book fascinating for all ages (I don't remember juvenile books being this cool when I was a kid). The reading level and, at times, disturbing content is probably appropriate for kids 5th grade and up.

Rating:
Summary: a picture is worth a thousand nightmares
Review: My mother gave this book to me when I was ten, which was a very long time ago. Those images of the mummies, so well-preserved that they don't look like mummies but like still-living human beings in some eternal pain we can't imagine -- they gave me nightmares then and they can still chill me to the stomach.

Rating:
Summary: scared s---tless
Review: While the first part of the book discussing the history of the Franklin Expedition was both interesting and informative, the remainder of the book seemed padded and contrived, as it dwelled too much on the modern day trials and tribulations of Beattie and his collaborators. The authors seemed to be trying too hard to build up to a climatic conclusion, and I felt that the book could have been much better written.