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A bunch of beach blanket books
In our family, summer isn't summer without at least a week in the sand and surf. Our four-year-old has loved the beach since he was a baby, despite the time he tried to eat the sand. Here's a diverse collection of beach books I'm saving for our long car trip from Massachusetts to Maryland, where warmer waves and a family crab feast will be waiting. |
REVIEWS BY ALICE CARY
The rest of the text and Frasier's mixed-media collages show how many different things can wash ashore -- shells, sea glass, a wooden shoe, abandoned rafts, turtle skulls, tangled rope, and more -- as the girl and her mother explore the gifts from the ocean. This is a book that encourages readers to keep their eyes peeled by including a mesh bag for found items and a separate booklet for children to make a record of their own beach-combing search. For her innovative illustrations, Frasier worked with photographs, cut paper, real objects, and silhouettes, all arranged on a tray of sand and photographed. In "An Ocean Journal" at the end, Frasier explains the origins of her many finds and adds interesting facts about such things as flora and fauna, sea turtle tracks, water, and sand. You'll definitely want to take this book on any beach trip.
By Debra Frasier Harcourt Brace, $16 All ages ISBN 0152588493
A very different but good companion book is the Reader's Digest Young Families' Our Mysterious Ocean, with "see-through" pages that show what types of sea life thrive at various depths. Journey from the sunlit zone where coral grows, to the "twilight zone" in the deep ocean and the "abyss," more than two miles below the ocean's surface, where rattails and tripod fish roam. This is not a greatly detailed book, but there's enough information for an intriguing journey to the bottom of the sea (even kids under the recommended age of eight will enjoy the images with the help of an older reader to guide them).
Reader's Digest Young Families, $12.99 Ages 8-12 ISBN 1575840588
By Marie Aubinais Abbeville Kids, $16.95 Ages 3-6 ISBN 0789203863
Should you run into a rainy day at the beach, pull out Crafts for Kids Who Are Wild about Oceans, by Kathy Ross. With fairly commonplace items (pipe cleaners, glue, laundry detergent bottles, straws, paint), kids can make crab puppets, sea stars, snails, pinching lobsters, and Styrofoam sea urchins. The water-spouting whale with a dish detergent spout looks particularly nifty. Younger kids will need an adult's help, but older children will have lots of fun following the straightforward directions.
By Kathy Ross Millbrook, $7.95 Ages 4-12 ISBN 0761303316
Another engrossing activity book to pack for vacation is one of the Puzzle Safari titles, In the Deep. This brightly colored board book contains five sturdy 12-piece jigsaw puzzles, each featuring a creature from the deep. On the facing page is basic information and a question with its answer hidden under the puzzle.
Alfred A. Knopf, $9.99 ISBN 0679889841
Hold Mommy's hand. Wade in the water, Diapers expand.
By Mary Brigid Barrett Red Wagon/Harcourt Brace, $5.95 Ages 1-3 One of my son's first and favorite books (and CD-ROMs) about the ocean was Mercer Mayer's Just Grandma and Me, about a special day at the shore. Now that rascal-hero Little Critter has yet another outing in At the Beach with Dad. The package is a great value containing a book, four small sand molds, a sand sifter, and a shovel. My son laughed loudly at the further misadventures of Little Critter, his sister, and father as they try to enjoy a day at the beach, only to end up in their backyard kiddy pool. Even though everything goes wrong (or perhaps because it does), youngsters will plunge into this book.
By Mercer Mayer Inchworm Press, $6.95 Ages 3-6 ISBN 1577193083
After reading these books, everyone in our house is more than ready to grab our flip-flops and go! See you there -- I'm the one with my nose in a book and my feet in the surf. My son is the fellow with the Little Critter sand and shovel set.
By Nancy Cote Albert Whitman, $13.95 Ages 3-6 ISBN 0807525049
Alice Cary and her son Will review books at home in Groton, Massachusetts.
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Out of the Ocean is both a splendid story and a field guide, the result of a lifelong love affair with the ocean. Author/illustrator Debra Frasier grew up in a house in Florida right on the Atlantic Ocean, and both her passion and knowledge of the sea are evident. The young girl narrating the book explains: "My mother says you can ask the ocean to bring you something. If you look, she says, you might find it."
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Enjoy yet another fun format with The Sea, a fold-out poster book in which the "pages" get bigger and bigger, until finally a 32-by-34-inch poster is revealed. In Marie Aubinais's simple tale, a group of increasingly larger creatures -- crab, fish, eel, octopus, and dolphin -- spy a fish hook and guess about its identity. Read it yourself to discover whether any of them take the bait.
Give babies their sea legs with the board book Beach Baby, by Mary Brigid Barrett, illustrated by Eve Chwast, featuring verse that will make every diaper-changer smile:
Nancy Cote offers a tale with a more uplifting turn of events in Flip-Flops. It's Mama's day off and she and Penny are heading to the beach, but Penny is hesitant to leave her friends behind in the city. Besides, she has only one flip-flop and feels a bit like an unmatched flip-flop herself with no one to play with. At first she is bored, but soon she finds a friend and more uses than she could have ever imagined for her lonely flip-flop.