Shadowing Shackleton! Captain's Log: Snowbound by Erin Dionne

Monday is "All about Explorers Day" at school and I'm reporting on the amazing explorer Ernest Shackleton!

Our little student is psyched. His tri-fold project board is completed, with an icebound sailing ship and its seamen frozen into styrofoam ice, framed by his neatly printed report and carefully mounted, cut-out photographs of the principals of the voyage. And he knows everything about the heroic English explorer of the South Pole's ocean. He can't wait for Monday!

But irony of ironies, Monday dawns with a blizzard. Our boy is marooned on their rocky coastline with his own crew--his parents, his dog, the ship's cat, and his pesky little brother, hereinafter called The Scalawag.

The Scalawag wastes no time. While the boy forms a shore party to explore the coast in his improvised dogsled, spotting a fur seal (his furry-coated neighbor with his snow blower), the Scalawag is up to no good, making off with the ship's hardtack rations (Mom's cookies). And our young explorer's favorite tankard and quill pen also go missing. But before they can be tracked down, all hands are to called to duty clearing the ice from their own deck.

Captain's Log. Day 3: The Endurance was crushed by ice in the Weddell Sea and twenty-eight men were stranded on ice floes. Although we have not yet reached such dangerous circumstances, our provisions are low. The hardtack is dwindling. I fear we may never resume our voyage.

And rations are growing short. Our boy is certain that The Scalawag is hoarding the hardtack. A raid must be made on the Scalawag's quarters, wherein the remnants of hardtack are mostly returned to the ship's stores. But...

Mutiny! The crew has turned against me! I am confined to quarters! My only joy is that The Scalawag is also contained.

Luckily, this crew's blizzard doesn't require clinging to floating ice floes, setting out in sail-rigged lifeboats, and slogging across 800 miles of icy ocean before reaching a whaling station, as Shackleton's did. In fact, on Day 5 of the ship's log, our boy, nicely turned out in his naval uniform, and The Scalawag, definitely well-fed, pile into the family car, Explorer project and all, and head back to school, where the project receives a warm welcome, in Erin Dionne's Captain's Log: Snowbound (Charlesbridge, 2019). Author Dionne offers up an Author's Note which logs her own time marooned on snow days, and she also includes the complete written report on Shackleton's voyage and a glossary of salty nautical terms, while artist Jeffrey Ebbeler's humorous illustrations of the family ship's log  record some memorably marooned snow days.

When the time comes (as it will for most schoolkids) when they must prepare a report on a famous historical personage, this one will be a great read-aloud to kick off the project, and young elementary grade students will love the family's snow-day sight gags which illustrator Ebbeler includes in his comic artwork. Adds Kirkus in their starred review, "When a young adventurer is snowed in, his predicament begins to parallel that of the icebound Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton," and both author and illustrator "enrich a story that takes its pretend play very seriously."