The Antarctic Mission is the 13th book in the series Aditi Adventures by the well known feminist, fabulist and writer Suniti Namjoshi. Aditi is a young girl (inspired by Namjoshi’s niece—her namesake) who sets out on the most amazing adventures across the world along with her three companions: a monkey, an ant, an elephant named Beautiful and sundry dragons. Originally published as a twelve book series dealing with diverse themes, the stories blend adventure and fantasy, the tech savvy world of today and the magical. The series include adventures, and has now expanded to 15 attesting to the enduring popularity of the heroine and her rollicking adventures. As they travel to far-flung places like London and the Great Barrier Reef, wander through the British Museum library, or visit the Antarctic, Aditi and her companions learn about random but important issues such as protecting the environment, how pollution affects rivers like the Thames and why sharks need to be protected. Namjoshi acknowledges that, ‘The fable, which is a form that comes easily to me, is a didactic form’ but she also makes it clear that, while ‘I don’t necessarily want to tell people what to think ,… I do want them to think.’ Despite this didactic underpinning, however, it is the adventures and the interweaving of the magical and the fantastic with reality that makes the books so popular.
The book takes Aditi and her friends, some rather reluctantly, to the snow-bound Continent to deal with the havoc being caused by the naughty hobgoblin Gobby who is destroying its pristine environment, turning white snow into black, colouring the hillsides green and pink and harassing the penguins by giving them spots and stripes!