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Yolen examines with quirky acuity the life in and around the sea. She sketches portraits of such unusual inhabitants as the anemone, grunion, paper nautilus, and Portuguese man-of-war. Yolen's eye isn't exclusively directed under the waves. She also includes those with a more fluid relationship to the sea: the playful sea otter; the salmon "flashing silver" as it heads to spawning grounds; "the rough-ridged mound" of a leatherback turtle plowing between "night-black mangroves."
The book celebrates sea life, but doesn't skirt the often harsh struggles for survival concealed by a calm surface: a beluga, "white and weary," anticipates the whaler's harpoon; while predators of the deep prowl such as the octopus, shark, killer whale, and barracuda with its "predacious jaw." Endnotes concisely fill in the context of these sea lives. Lewin's versatile illustrations, smooth and dreamy or stark and plangent, color in the atmosphere.
Some of the same characters can be found in the informative Families of the Deep Blue Sea by Kenneth Mallory and staff of the New England Aquarium, illustrated by Marshall Peck III. Designed with boldly colored art for young readers, the book calls for identification with selected sea inhabitants as it relates capsule descriptions of their lives from birth to early maturity. The title may be misleading, though: the definition of sea families is elastic enough to include polar bears and penguins, walruses and seals, even crocodiles.
Paul Shackman is a children's editor and reviewer from New York City.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.