The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

McCaughrean, Geraldine. The White Darkness. New York: Harper Tempest, 2005.

Sym lives and breathes Antarctica. She’s read all the books. She’s watched movies and documentaries. When a weekend trip to Paris becomes an expedition to Antarctica, Sym is thrilled. Sym has an unusual friend: Captain Lawrence Oates, otherwise known as Titus. He was part of a polar exploration at the turn of the twentieth century. Titus has been dead for almost ninety years, but he’s still alive and well in Sym’s head. Sym describes Titus:

“He is everything, everything, everything I ever admired and wanted and couldn’t have. He is everything I needed and couldn’t find in real life.
Of course he is.
That’s why I invented him” (294).

When her uncle’s obsession with discovering Symmes’s Hole becomes life threatening, it is Titus who urges Sym to meet the challenge and survive. To find out more about Sym’s adventures in Antarctica, you’ll have to read The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean.