From School Library Journal
Grade 1-3-A boy loses his fish trap just off the coast of Tasmania, and is helped to retrieve it by a diver friend who wants to take him along to see "the world under the waves." This simple plot furnishes the mechanism by which readers are taken on a visually fascinating tour through a kelp forest shown in vibrantly colorful and amazingly detailed collages. The constructions incorporate natural materials such as pressed seaweed, sponges, and sand; the kelp itself is modeled with a translucent artist's clay, and the realism is extraordinary. The golds and greens of the kelp form a vivid contrast to the blue water and create the illusion that viewers are indeed looking upward through a waving, moving forest of living seaweed. By the end, the boy is so impressed by the beauty around him that he empties his catch from the fish trap so that the creatures may remain in their "mysterious, hidden world," and readers will be in complete agreement. An author's note contains brief but interesting information about kelp forests.
Marian Drabkin, Richmond Public Library, CA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Gr. 2-4. In this picture book for older children, Ben, who is fishing in some weeds, gets frustrated because he's catching only minnows. He fights with the weeds to free his trap, but he has to call his friend Sophie, who knows how to dive, to untangle it for him. Sophie agrees, if Ben will come below the water with her to see "the world under the waves." The remainder of the book describes the underwater sights of a kelp forest and an encounter with a whale. The text is far less interesting than Baker's fascinating sea collages, which combine pressed seaweed, sponges, and sand to luminous effect. They reveal an amazing array of color, light, texture, and movement that appears so three-dimensional it's hard to believe the pictures are flat.
Susan Dove LempkeCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
