THE GREAT NORTHERN EXPEDITION

In 1725, Captain Vitus Bering, under orders from Peter the Great, embarked on an expedition to find a link between America and Asia. The mission failed, but Bering was unwilling to give up, and so in 1733 began the Great Northern Expedition, charting Russia’s northern shoreline and parts of Alaska and Japan. Told from the perspective of a child whose father, Sven Waxell, was second-in-command to Bering, the tale is magnificent in scope yet personal and immediate. The lengthy, trying land journey led to a treacherous sea voyage, and just as they reached Alaska, storms and scurvy began to decimate the crew. Captain Bering died in 1741, but the narrator’s father “led us through despair to survival.” From elegant neoclassical St. Petersburg and brilliant northern Russian vistas of endless verdant forest to choppy seas and towering snowy mountains, the contrasts conveyed in Pritelli’s dramatic panoramas could hardly be greater. Close-ups of hulking bears, snarling wolves, and other wildlife dwarf the tiny humans stretching across the double-spread backgrounds. Time jumps abridge the nine-year venture as the seasons pass and supplies are slow to arrive. Saturated greens, blues, and pops of red give the pages an eerie glow. Pritelli’s bold, inventive use of perspective conveys excitement and wonder along with fear as the spare text outlines a story of persistence and determination.