Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | EASY FRA | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Open this book and walk along the ocean shore. If you look carefully, you might find all kinds of things. Some--like shells and sea glass--will be small enough to fit in your hand. Others--like the sun and the sky and the waves--will be too big to carry home. But no matter what your journey holds, you'll soon discover that looking for the ocean's treasures can be as important as finding them.
Author Notes
DEBRA FRASIER'Sdebut picture book, On the Day You Were Born, has become a perennial classic for welcoming new babies and celebrating families. Her other books include Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster, A Birthday Cake is No Ordinary Cake, The Incredible Water Show , and Out of the Ocean . She was born and raised on the Atlantic coast of Florida and now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. www.debrafrasier.com "
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"My mother says you can ask the ocean to bring you something. If you look, she says, you might find it," begins this picture book tribute to the sea. While the child covets such tangible "treasures" as sea glass, pelican feathers and a note-filled bottle, her mother "keeps asking for things that are too big to carry home. Sun. Water. Silver moonlight. The sound of waves. Sea turtle tracks at dawn." Frasier's (On the Day You Were Born) narrative sets the mother's rather impressionistic passages against the child's more grounded listing of the many ocean gifts the child collects. Graphically, the book combines full-spread photos of beach findings and sunlit water with Frasier's fanciful collage-like art. The opening double-page illustration invites readers to view the sunny beach scene along with daughter and mother, the sand stretching before them, hibiscus blooming and frothy waves hitting the shore. However, succeeding spreads are interrupted by grainy, distorted photos inset within the collages. Overlaid on top of these photos, framed in heavy black lines, mother and child are silhouetted with no discernible features, which tends to distance the reader. This jarring juxtaposition makes what would otherwise be a kind of spiritual scavenger hunt at the beach a rather jolting experience for the reader. "An Ocean Journal" at volume's end offers aspiring beachcombers information on some of the sea's fruits. All ages. (Mar.) FYI: The book is also available in the Out of the Ocean Treasure Bag and Ocean Journal Package (includes book, bag and 8-page journal) for $19.95, ISBN -201521-3. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Frasier's eloquent story of a mother and daughter walking along a beach evokes the wonder of finding shoreline treasures such as driftwood, feathers, and shells. Collages that incorporate cut paper and photographs provide a scrapbook appearance but are sometimes over-busy. A six-page illustrated glossary, detailed and informative, elaborates on items and issues from the story. From HORN BOOK Fall 1998, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Ages 4-8. The author of the very popular On the Day You Were Born (1991) again celebrates the majesty and beauty of Earth, this time narrowing her focus to the ocean and its gifts. A mother tells her child, "You can ask the ocean to bring you something. If you look . . . you might find it." The mother asks for things too big to take home, but the child wants smaller items--shells, polished pieces of colored glass, a turtle skull, and other treasures. The illustrations are a cheerful if somewhat jarring combination of paintings, cut-paper pictures, and photographs, but the lyrically written, nicely understated text invites readers to notice and appreciate all that the ocean (and life) can offer. Most libraries will want at least one copy of this substantial picture book. (Reviewed April 15, 1998)0152588493Susan Dove Lempke
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 3"My mother says you can ask the ocean to bring you something." Frasier evokes the limitless possibilities of a summer beach day and personalizes it through the conversations of a mother/daughter pair. A sense of the ocean as gift giver is projected, registering the beachcombers' hopes and satisfying them when the time is right. In this manner, objects washed ashore, from a wooden shoe to bottles with messages, all seem charged with magic. Frasier incorporates full-color snapshots with cut-paper art. Her illustrations stretch over double-page spreads. Close-up photos of sand provide the background. As in On the Day You Were Born (Harcourt, 1991), the layout is inventive and effective, whether cradling the text or propelling readers on to the next page. Boldly framed silhouettes of the narrator and her mother are juxtaposed onto beach scenes, creating a feeling of depth, a window into a more spiritual dimension. The book ends with a six-page "Ocean Journal" that gives background on the featured found objects: sharks' teeth, sea-turtle tracks, black skate egg pouches, beach glass. A satisfying offering that will open doors for its readers.Liza Bliss, Worcester Public Library, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Relief for the land-locked comes in the form of this book, which delivers the salt smells and sea sounds that accompany beachcombers right to readers' laps. Frasier (On the Day You Were Born, 1991, not reviewed, etc.) combines full-color seashore photographs and cut-paper shapes in tropical-colored collages. As a mother and daughter walk the beach, the child is fascinated by collecting material things such as shells, beach glass, a wooden shoe, and shark's eggs. The mother takes in bigger things: the sun, sea turtle tracks, and the wash of waves on the beach. When the little girl protests that those things are always there, her mom explains her secret--""the bigger the thing, the easier it is to forget to see it."" A photographic afterword explains the significance of the beachcombing finds that are pictured, from a wooden shoe to a glass float. Frasier also chronicles the life cycle of the sea turtle, whose tracks she saw, explains how notes in a bottle get transported by ocean currents, and reveals which finds are rare. The value of this treasure hunter's appreciation is in the notion that real ""treasure"" is in the looking. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
