During this unit, I read a book called “Lost in the Antarctic: The Doomed Voyage of the Endurance” by Tod Olson. This book is a literary nonfiction that illustrates the story of Shackleton and his crew’s survival during their journey.

This bookclub book is a true story of Shackleton, the boss, and his crew’s journey to the Antarctic in 1914. They had to deal with many crises threatening their lives on their way to the Antarctic. The crews endured the emergencies in various ways and ultimately returned all alive.

PAGE 1

On the first page of my notebook, I explored the key details and ideas in the book’s first chapter. By identifying these points, I tried to understand the author’s main ideas, such as the theme, central idea, and social issues. After reading the entire book, I returned to this page and was surprised that many of my thoughts after reading the first chapter continued to carry over to the later parts of the story.

PAGE 2

The “Text are Complex” page was about identifying new ideas and deepening my thinking about how nonfiction books explore multiple big ideas beyond the obvious ones. On this page, I wrote some parts that could be considered as central ideas at the beginning of the book. The central ideas in Chapter 1 mainly contain information about the risk of going to the Antarctic during the 1900s.

PAGE 3

The theme page was aimed to understand the book’s theme, particularly the life lesson and the author’s intention in all aspects. While reading the book, I learned two meaningful themes: “We should work as a team when dealing with challenges.” and “You should not give up; you will reach your goal.”. These two themes were the most significant life lessons during Shackleton’s journey, and I realized and understood more about the main idea.

PAGE 4

On this page, I pointed out some central ideas with lots of evidence from the book. The first central idea I found was that “Teamwork is the most important factor for survival.” and “The biggest obstacle of the journey was the harsh conditions.”. This page helped me develop my thinking more widely from the beginning to the end of my book.

 PAGE 5

The perspective page clearly illustrates the author’s opinion on the book about working together during challenging situations. The page displays some quotes that support the author’s perspective, especially on p.45, where a quote that perfectly matches the author’s thoughts. After I finished the book, my thoughts changed, and I had the same opinion as the author about the importance of teamwork.

PAGE 6

This page is a cause-and-effect page where I had to show my understanding of how events were connected. My page reflects the complexity of the cause and effect as one cause leads to one effect, which leads to another effect, and another. It was interesting to see the part starting from the weather conflict to the effect of the ship, Endurance, breaking apart.

SYNTHESIZE PAGE

My first synthesized page demonstrates the pattern and connections between the events that occurred, which allows me to see the bigger picture of the book. This page reflects all parts of the events as Shackleton and his crews had to face similar kinds of challenges during the whole journey. After completing this page, I have better understood the flow that connects the events throughout the story.

SYNTHESIZE PAGE (NARRATIVE&INFORMATIVE)

These two synthesized pages were about identifying nonfiction books’ narrative and informative elements. On the narrative side, I summarized the pattern of Shackleton’s journey using quotes that included narrative elements such as dialogue or rising actions, illustrating the events the crew had to overcome. On the informative side, I wrote some quotes that contain informative elements, data, photos, dates, and locations to emphasize the challenging moments that Shackleton and his crew faced.