What makes ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ a remarkable children’s book?

 

               The story in this book opens in the year 1866. Everyone in Europe and America is talking about a mysterious creature that has been sinking ships. Finally, the government decides to intervene and commissions a ship named The Abraham Lincoln to capture and identify the creature.

               On board the ship are Pierre Aronnax, a renowned scientist along with his manservant, Conseil, and Ned Land the king of harpooners. The search ship was attacked by the creature. The three men find themselves on top of the mysterious creature, which is actually a submarine vessel. They are taken on board and placed in a cell. The men meet Captain Nemo, who in order to escape repression in his homeland, built a submarine called The Nautilus and roams freely through the world’s oceans in it. The ‘twenty thousand leagues’ in the title refers to the distance travelled; six times the diameter of the Earth.

               ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ is a science fiction children’s book written by Jules Verne. It was first published in 1870. The novel was first published in English in 1872, in an abbreviated translation by Lewis Page Mercier, a British clergyman.

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