Douglas Fox used his journey across Antarctic ice sheets to show how scientists are studying a strange world of lakes and rivers beneath the ice. He wrote that scientists think that “lakes under the ice might act like giant slippery banana peels.” He and the researchers traveled to a lake that is “buried under ice, two Empire State Buildings below our feet.”
Arndt Reuning, a science reporter for Deutschlandradio, said Fox covered “an important issue in a vivid and funny way. He’s a superb and entertaining story-teller.” Catherine Hughes of National Geographic Kidssaid that Fox “succeeds in bringing the reader with him as his scientific adventure in Antarctica unfolds.”
Fox said that perhaps the biggest challenge in writing his story for a young audience “was remembering to be awestruck by the basic things that we tend to take for granted—like the simple fact that glaciers can evaporate. More and more I think that this is also good advice for communicating science to adults.”
