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Just as some -- but only some -- of the mystery has evaporated from the world's wide waters, books devoted to the sea have dwindled but not disappeared. Like the gifts of the sea-shells, driftwood, and the dubious modern additions of medical debris and congealed oil, sundry writings emerge with the regular ebb of each publishing tide.
A fitting way to delve into the wealth of ocean-inspired words past and present is provided by a new compendium for children (and others). Reflections of poets, writers, and scholars through the ages fill the pages of The Seas: A Celebration of Nature, in Word and Image, "conceived and compiled" by Michelle Lovric. Naturally, the works of the great maritime chroniclers Melville and Conrad appear as well as Garcia Lorca, Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, Longfellow, Emerson, Euripides, Whitman, Karl Shapiro, and a host of others.
Their words are complemented by images, seascapes that, though undated, have the look of 19th-century genre painting at its best. The artists represented are not as well known as the writers -- in fact, to non-specialists they're bound to be downright obscure -- but there's nothing negligible about their art. These paintings show the sea in its splendor, rage, and calm, often as human figures in frail crafts harvest or battle it, contemplate it, or wait patiently by its rocky shores.
Paul Shackman is a children's editor and reviewer from New York City.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.