From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 1?As in the collaborators' ingenious Richie's Rocket (1993) and Harry's Helicopter (1990, both Morrow), Ancona uses trick photography to send a child on a voyage in a cardboard, obviously homemade craft?but this variation on the theme takes a nosedive in quality. Young Sally sends her father off in his fishing boat, then climbs inside her orange submarine to play?and suddenly she's far out at sea, following a helpful seal, hiding from a shark, and being whirled back to shore by a sounding whale. Unlike the previous books, the full-color photographs are not convincing. In several views, the sharply rendered?and dry?child or sub is obviously superimposed on a blurred marine scene; worse yet, text and photos do not always agree. A "giant lobster" turns out to be smaller than Sally's forearm, and there are no fish to be seen in a shot where she is supposedly surrounded by them. A substandard offering.?John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ages 4^-8. While helping to ready the boat and load lobster traps, nets, and bait, Sally wishes she could go to sea like her father. Instead, she must content herself with her cardboard submarine, a clever creation fashioned from boxes, duct tape, and red paint. Climbing into her sub, Sally is off on an underwater adventure where she eludes a shark, saves a lobster, and is catapulted home by a whale. Ancona's clever photo-collage illustrations lend a strong sense of reality to the underwater fantasy. This is the third in the You-Are-There Adventures series, and once again, Anderson and Anacona's collaboration will delight young children--and just might spark a cardboard construction boom.
Linda Ward-Callaghan
