The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole

Robert Michael BallantyneProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
534K words
Chapters
54

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Arctic ExplorationSurvival ChallengeWilderness SurvivalAdventure SagaCourage and FriendshipBoy HeroIcy Wilderness19th CenturyExotic CultureYouth Reading

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole by R. M. BallantyneAuthor: Ballantyne, R. M. (Robert Michael), 1825-1894,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Jun 7, 2007

Editor's review

This is a polar adventure story by R. M. Ballantyne, a celebrated Victorian writer of children's adventure fiction. It follows an expedition bound for the North Pole and blends instruction with suspense. A hallmark of Ballantyne's writing is his accurate interweaving of geography, natural history, and seamanship, so that young readers absorb knowledge of nature and exploration while racing through the plot. The characters are vividly drawn, the dialogue carries the humor characteristic of its era, and the adventure sequences move at a brisk pace. As a public-domain eBook, it works well as an introductory adventure read in the original English and as a textual sample for readers studying nineteenth-century children's literature and polar imagination. While reading, note how the narrator embeds popular science in the story and how the period depicts the polar environment and indigenous peoples; both offer value for literary and cultural history alike.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the chapter titles first to grasp the expedition route, then proceed chapter by chapter to avoid losing the plot over unfamiliar words.
  2. Keep pen and paper to note geographical and natural-history terms as they appear, and look them up together afterward.
  3. Read alongside contemporary polar exploration narratives to compare fiction and reportage.
  4. Pair the original English with an audiobook to train your ear for long sentences.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners? Not really for complete beginners or elementary learners. It was written in the nineteenth century, with long sentences and abundant nautical and geographical vocabulary. Try it once you have intermediate reading ability or above; you might start with a simplified version or an annotated edition.
Does the book contain scientific knowledge? Yes. Ballantyne habitually weaves geography, climate, flora and fauna into the adventure plot, but it reflects nineteenth-century understanding. It is better read as a historical text than used as modern polar science material.
Is this a print book or an eBook? This edition was released by Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain eBook, usually available in plain text and other formats for download from its website. It is not a traditional publisher's print edition.
Do I need to know the author's background to read it? No prior research is needed. It is enough to know that Ballantyne was a Victorian author famous for boys' adventure novels, often with an educational bent. If you are interested afterward, looking up his life and creative background will be more effective.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Robert Michael Ballantyne Author · United Kingdom · 1825–1894

Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825–1894) was a Scottish writer of children's literature, born in Edinburgh. At sixteen he went to Canada and worked for the Hudson's Bay Company for six years, an experience that later supplied material for his adventure stories; after returning to Scotland in 1847 he devoted himself to writing and produced more than a hundred adventure novels, of which ninety-seven are held in this collection. His representative works include The Coral Island, The Dog Crusoe and his Master, Black Ivory, The Lighthouse and Martin Rattler, mostly drawing on seafaring, desert-island and frontier adventure, with tight plots and solid detail that combine instruction with appeal for young readers. He was also skilled in watercolour painting. Public information on his early education and private life is limited.