Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that there's little of concern here, beyond a few moments of sexism, but the world of 19th-century Europe was definitely a man's world.
Families who read this book could discuss whether or not you think this story could be possible. Could there be vast caverns under the Earth, possibly with hidden civilizations? Could there be a giant ocean? Could plants and creatures from a previous epoch have survived down there? What does modern science know for sure about the interior of the planet?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Matt Berman
This classic work of imaginative fiction from one of the fathers of the science-fiction genre has lasted for nearly 150 years for a reason -- it's exciting and brilliantly inventive, even visionary. It has been made into numerous movie versions (imdb.com lists 13), including the Classic with James Mason. With each new version, viewers may be interested in reading the book it was based on. Normally you'd be glad to pass along the unabridged original (in one of its several translations from the original French) of a classic to your child, but in this case all but the most experienced readers are going to find it very heavy going. Pushing something like this on children before they are ready for it can often spoil it for them forever.
Verne was writing in an earlier era for a mostly adult audience, presumed, if they were literate enough to be reading novels for pleasure, to be very well educated. The vocabulary is advanced, the descriptions lengthy, and the scientific and literary references removed from the experience of most young readers. Experienced teens will enjoy it, and younger experienced listeners may enjoy hearing it read by an adult with the patience to stop often for explanations. Younger readers will do better to look for one of the many adaptations: illustrated, comic, and graphic novel versions (see the other choices section below for a free online version), retellings, condensed, abridged, and edited versions, and movie novelizations.
From The Book
I was in the presence of products of the Earth, but constructed on a gigantic scale. My uncle named them immediately:
'It is just a forest of mushrooms.'
He was right. It may be imagined how big these plants grew in their preferred hot, humid environment. I knew that the Lycoperdon giganteum reached, according to Bulliard,72 eight or nine feet in circumference; but here we had white mushrooms thirty or forty feet high, with caps of the same width. There were thousands of them. No light could pierce their dense cover, and complete darkness reigned beneath those domes, crowded together like the round roofs of an African city.
Plot Summary:
Professor Lindenbrock and his nephew Axel discover an old document that purports to show the entrance in an extinct volcano to a series of caverns leading to the Earth's center. Following the instructions, they undertake a hazardous journey deep within the Earth, where they find an underground world complete with ocean, and flora and fauna left from an earlier epoch.
Related Books:
Other Books by Jules Verne:
Around the World in 80 Days
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
From the Earth to the Moon
H. G. Wells: The Other SF Pioneer:
The Time Machine
The Island of Doctor Moreau
The Invisible Man
The War of the Worlds
Related Web sites:
Online annotated edition
Free audiobook version
Classics Illustrated online version
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ViolenceSeveral injuries through accidents. |
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Social BehaviorA product of the time in which it was written, to modern eyes the book is rather sexist: "a girl would only be in the way," etc. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoAdults drink wine and gin, and one smokes a pipe. |
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