Through the Air to the North Pole: 05/19/25

Through the Air to the North Pole by Roy Rockwood (1906) is the start of the Great Marvel series. Like Carolyn Keene, Roy Rockwood is a pseudonym used by a variety of authors. For this series, the books are attributed to Howard Roger Garis.

The book follows the misadventures of Jack Darrow and Mark Sampson, two teenaged orphans who are rescued and then recruited by Professor Henderson after they survive a train derailment. The professor and his small crew are on a race to discover the North Pole by dirigible named the Monarch. As this is an adventure book each and every chapter ends on a cliffhanger of sorts. The boys are chased out town, they're in a train derailment, bad guys almost get the ship, the ship nearly crashes more times than I care to count, they're captured by various peoples, and so forth. But of course they meet their goal and then the trip home is really more of an afterthought.

Clearly this book was written with the cliffhangers in mind more than anything else. There are scenes where some basic research would have helped. For instance there's a scene where "sea lions" are in a death match with polar bears. Except the sea lions as described are actually walruses and the polar bears are somehow only the size of black bears (but white).

There's also a lot of racism especially with the reoccurring bands of "Esquimaux" people who other than locale bear nothing in common with any of the peoples who actually live up there. The Professor also has a companion / right hand man who is a Black man with a penchant for using a lot of big words. Personally I think he's the brains of the operation because the Professor is an absolute idiot.

This adventure sits on the Road Narrative Spectrum. The adventure is framed as privileged travelers (00) racing "discover" something. Their destination are the wildlands (99) of the north pole. Their route there is an offroad (66) one via the Monarch.

The next book in the series is Under the Ocean to the South Pole (1907).

Three stars

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