The Impossible Voyage of Kon-Tiki

November 1, 2015
When he was still in college, the Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl lived for a year on the Polynesian island of Fatu Hiva and became fascinated with a question: where did the Polynesian islanders come from? Stone carvings on the island resembled statues found in South America, indicating, perhaps, a connection between the Polynesian Tiki and the Incan god Kon-Tiki Viracocha. Though skeptics scoffed at Heyerdahl's idea (most scholars believed that Polynesia was originally settled from Asia), in 1947 he embarked on a 4,300-mile ocean voyage and proved that ancient Incan sailors could have reached the South Pacific by raft. In dramatic double-page watercolor spreads, Ray follows Heyerdahl and his five-man crew on their 101-day odyssey on a balsa-log raft. Emphasizing high-seas adventure over theory, the story will capture the imagination of young readers with the drama of flying fish, gale-force winds, giant waves, and, ultimately, the raft's fortuitous landing on an uninhabited Polynesian island. However, though the large-scale illustrations are visually appealing, they also limit the number of scenes in which to tell the story, and the long ocean voyage is over too quickly for young readers to get a true sense of the arduous quest. Back matter includes a more thorough discussion of anthropologists' theories of populations and migrations and notes that Heyerdahl was one of the first to warn of pollution in the oceans and to advocate for a green world. dean schneider

(Copyright 2015 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)