Grade 5-8?This info-novel is a modern-day, ecology-oriented 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for kids. It is 2000, and a deep-sea highest-tech submersible with over-the-edge computers and a mechanical translator capable of coping with nonhuman speech is about to descend. It's crewed by a Russian female captain who is multilingual and who holds multiple degrees and a male Scots/Japanese chief engineer with ditto multis, and includes a scientific team headed by an outspoken male scientist/doctor/author/professor and his two, teenaged, adopted, genius children. They're accompanied by an American male observer/reporter/photographer/medic. This expeditionary unit soon encounters the Cetasapiens: extra-intelligent, culturally and technologically advanced super-dolphins who immediately take the humans under their dexterous split flippers. Together they explore a good portion of the Pacific Ocean and provide readers with a lot of oceanic knowledge (a la Verne). The result is an adventurous cruise woven with pleas from undersea creatures to preserve the planet's life-giving oceans, ending with a hopeful hasta la vista rather than a terminating adios. The bibliography is extensive. Information is included about the 12 artists who cooperated on the illustrative portions of the book. Oversized, colorful, highly visual in content, and imagination stirring.?Patricia Manning, Eastchester Public Library, NY
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Working in the tradition of James Gurney's Dinotopia, Ballantine heads beneath the waves with the crew of the Turtle, who discover an intelligent mammalian species called cetasapiens that teach them how fragile the oceans are.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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