By: Erik Brooks,
on 6/8/2016
Blue Whale Blues Written and Illustrated by Peter Carnavas Kane Miller 9/27/2015 978-1-61067-458-4 32 pages Ages 4—8 “When Penguin hears Whale singing the blues, he tries to help. But how exactly do you stop a blue whale from feeling blue? A delightful story about a whale with bike trouble and …
By: JOANNA MARPLE,
on 9/25/2015
Title: The Whale in My Swimming Pool Written and illustrated by: Joyce Wan Published by: Farrer, Strauss, Giroux, 2015 Themes/Topics: swimming (paddling) pool, whale, boy Suitable for ages: 3-5 Opening: Race you to the pool! Whoa… … Continue reading
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By: Donna McDine,
on 4/8/2014
By: Donna McDine,
on 3/27/2014
By: Mayra Calvani,
on 3/26/2014
By: Donna McDine,
on 3/25/2014
Enter to win a copy of Whaley's Big Adventure, written by Alexander Luke and presented by award-winning author and grandmother Carole P. Roman. Giveaway begins March 20, 2014, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends April 19, 2014, at 11:59 P.M. PST.
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By: Donna McDine,
on 3/19/2014
By: JOANNA MARPLE,
on 9/12/2013
Title: if you want to see a whale
Written by Julie Flogliano,
Illustrated by Erin E. Stead
Published by Roaring Book Press, May 2013
Ages: 2-5
Themes: patience, whale-watching
Opening line:
If you want to see a whale you will need a window.
Synopsis:
A story of sweet and simple practical tips on how a child might become an adept whale-watcher and the virtue of the wait! This includes what you will need, such as time for wondering and an ocean. But the little boy also receives gentle warnings about distractions one might need to avoid, like the lure of sweet pink roses or the temptation to cloud-gaze.
Why I like this book:
Waiting is hard for an adult. For a little child waiting can feel interminable. This soothing, lyrical language, gentle rhythm and perfect pacing make this a great choice for bedtime or a quiet moment in the day. The illustrations and text breathe patience and an invitation to astute observation even for little eyes. Through all of the potential distractions (even the pirates are alluring) the reader is constantly centered on the clear goal of seeing a whale.
The illustrations are light and filled with wonder and depth. You see the perspective already on the choice on the front cover of making the ocean so high and vast! The dog and bird are also delightful companions to the little boy on each spread. Sometimes I am more drawn to either the words or the pictures in a picture book, in this case, I love both equally. The illustrations are created with pencil and linoleum print techniques, and peppered with humor, whimsy and depth. The last two pages with the barnacle-encrusted whale swimming right under the boy’s boat and then just the tip of the whale emerging are worth the wait and you may wonder if they had been there, ‘unseen’, all along.
This is truly a talented paring of author and illustrator and I will stick my neck out and say I think this picture book may well win some awards.
Activities:
A predicting activity – if you want to see a (tiger, hawk……) you would need to……. and be careful to avoid…………….
Whale-watching in North America
Whale and Dolphin-watching in Europe
Video of IF YOU WANT TO SEE A WHALE
Every Friday, authors and KidLit bloggers post a favorite picture book. To see a complete listing of all the Perfect Picture Books with resources, please visit author Susanna Leonard Hill’s Perfect Picture Books.
The Children’s Book Review
Published: August 31, 2012
Granny’s Clan: A Tale of Wild OrcasBy Dr. Sally Hodson
Illustrated by Ann Jones
ISBN: 978-1-58469-172-3 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-58469-171-6 (hardback)
Ages 4 to 10, fully illustrated, 32 pages
There is a 100 year-old hero living in the deep blue sea of the Pacific Northwest. She is a 7,000-pound great grandmother and an awesome athlete. She has successfully led her beleaguered clan through very tough times, and is their undisputed leader. Meet Granny, an orca (or killer whale), the hero portrayed by a whale expert in a new children’s picture book, Granny’s Clan: A Tale of Wild Orcas.
Based on actual orca (killer whale) research, this book combines science with the real story of how family, friendship, and a grandmother’s love are helping this magnificent but endangered orca clan to survive.
Author Dr. Sally Hodson, formerly executive director of The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, Washington, is uniquely qualified to tell this tale. And she tells it from the perspective of two young real-life cousin whales in Granny’s clan.
Illustrator Ann Jones lives on the shore of Orcas Island, Washington, and also knows the whales well. Working with pastels in vibrant color, she was careful to show the whales with their unique fins and color patches so that they are individually identifiable.
Granny babysits, plays with her great-grandchildren, and teaches them much like a human granny would do. The whales have a language with dialects, share food, care for each other, and have traditions that are carried on for generations. “As the matriarch of her clan, Granny carries the critical knowledge needed by her family to survive. She is the heartbeat and the wisdom-keeper for her clan,” says Hodson.
“Once we feared orcas and shot them. Then we became intrigued and captured them to entertain us in marine parks. Next we studied them and found that they are unique individuals who live complex social lives with their families. Now they are endangered and we are trying to save them from threats we created in our shared environment. During the century of her life, Granny has experienced the entire range of human behaviors towards orcas. Yet, unlike many other elders of her clan, she approaches boats and the humans who watch her.
Once Granny swam right alongside the boat Hodson was on. “She lifted her head above
water and held that position while she looked right at me. Making eye contact with a one-hundred year old orca is an experience that cannot be described.”
Granny’s Clan uses actual incidents as the basis for the story. For example, Hodson learned from the captain of a whale-watching ship of a time when the clan was resting close to shore, swimming closely together as they typically do when “asleep.” But two young whale’s weren’t ready for sleep. They were breaching and making lots of noise! So Granny dove down and called the young ones to her, as could be heard on the ship’s hydrophone. She “sang” to them and evidently told them to rest—because all three soon resurfaced and rested quietly!
Hodson was intimately involved in the 2002 rescue and release of Springer, a young and undernourished whale lost in Puget Sound. With huge public support and cooperation among agencies, the young whale was successfully re-united with her clan.
Hodson has also personally received an orca courtesy. While on a kayaking trip, she found herself in the path of Granny’s clan. With their dorsal fins showing, the clan was moving, and she was in the way. Although she tried to paddle close to shore to get out of their path, she suddenly saw that a tall male dorsal fin was headed straight for her kayak. But then the whale saw her, and gently and quietly slid beneath the surface and passed underneath her. “I was traveling in his home environment and he responded with gentleness and respect,” she said.
Hodson, who lives on Orcas Island, Washington, received her doctorate in education in 1979 from the University of Colorado, with a focus on environmental education, ecology, and animal behavior, and worked as a marine naturalist for several years. Detailed information about orcas is in Granny’s Clan as well as on her website, www.sallyhodson.com. Simultaneously with the release of the book, Hodson is also providing numerous free lesson plans and resources for teachers and parents on the publisher’s website, www.dawnpub.com.
Ann Jones is a retired elementary school teacher who has always had a close tie to nature. When she and her husband moved to 20 acres of land in California they planted 40,000 tree seedlings that are now tall trees. In 1992 they retired to Orcas Island where she noticed every detail about the orca whales. “I know how the water moves to make room for them as they dive down or come to the surface. I know how the mist tucks next to the islands in the distance.” She took up her interest in art in a big way. Her pastel paintings are now well known. She has completing commissioned works as well as gallery paintings.
Jones was just getting ready to start painting Granny for this book when she heard the distinctive sound of orcas exhaling. She ran to the shore and there was part of the clan, only about 20 feet away. What an auspicious start!
The Author Showcase is a place for authors and illustrators to gain visibility for their works. This article was provided by the author. Learn more …
Original article: Granny’s Clan: A Tale of Wild Orcas
©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.
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By: Zoe,
on 11/5/2011
In the run up to Christmas I thought I’d take a moment each week to highlight gifts you could get your family (or yourself) made by children’s book illustrators and authors. Many illustrators offer their work directly for sale and it’s a great way to support book artists and get yourself something beautiful that will last a lifetime.
Kate Slater‘s first children’s picture book Magpie’s Treasure was published by Andersen Press in November 2010 and her second book, ABC London is now available for pre-order.
Kate has an etsy shop where you can buy her illustrations, stunning brooches, cards and ornaments. Some of my favourite items are these bird brooches:
And this whale print:
You can find Kate’s website here.
You can find Kate’s blog here.
Kate is on Twitter here.
And don’t forget, Kate’s shop is here.
By: Zoe,
on 9/29/2011
Here’s the last lot of session plans for our day off-timetable as part of Children’s Book Week next week. These sessions are for year 2 studens (6-7 year olds) and are based on their current topic “Oceans and Seas”.
Book: The fantastic undersea life of Jacques Cousteau by Dan Yaccarino
Follow up book: Manfish: The Story of Jacques Cousteau by Jennifer Berne and Eric Puybaret
Focus activity: Watching a short video of Jacques Cousteau then creating a porthole through which creatures of the deep can be viewed.
Resources required: paper plates, strips of tissue paper in shades of blue, glue, permanent pens/crayons (make sure whatever you use does not run when glue is painted over it, and that the colours are strong enough to be visible through the tissue paper), scissors, grey paint (optional – for painting the plates to make them look more like portholes).
Independent activities: Set of ocean factfiles with colouring in and also some maths-based, ocean-themed activities all from learningpage.com (you need to sign up for access to these, but sign up is quick, easy and free)
Additional books: Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea by Steve Jenkins, Star of the Sea: A Day in the Life of a Starfish by Janet Halfmann and Joan Paley
A porthole made from paper plates
1. Take one plate and draw a creature of the deep in the centre of the plate.
2. Glue strips of tissue paper across your plate (this will look best if the tissue paper has previously been scrunched up and is then smoothed out again)
3. Take your second plate and cut out the central circle. Optionally paint this plate gray.
4. Put glue around the rim of the first plate and stick the second plate on top to create your porthole
5. Trim away any excess tissue paper left hanging out between the plates.
Random House has produced a Teacher’s Sheet for The fantastic undersea life of Jacques Cousteau which contains lots of discussion prompts (opens as a pdf document).
Book: Immi by Ka
By: Lauren,
on 8/19/2011
It's being called "a whale of a problem," and not just by me. According to research published in the Journal of Heredity, endangered Southern Resident orcas are mating within their family groups. This "genetic bottleneck" means the whales could be more susceptible to diseases, early mortality or failure to produce calves. The study's lead author is Michael J. Ford, a scientist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
By: Karen Romano Young,
on 4/3/2011
There’s been a lot of discussion about invented aspects of nonfiction lately, although of course it has always been an issue: whether to use only direct quotes in context, and not to envision conversations; whether to connect points A and C with a B that seems necessary but is unknown; whether -- and how -- to fill in the blanks of a narrative.
Although the answers are full of grey area (and controversy) they seem more black and white to me than do answers to similar questions about illustrations. While illustrators must use real, reliable references, they also make tricky decisions about what to show -- and wander the border between fact and fiction struggling to envision a scene that demonstrates the heart of the story being told or the situation being described.
Take my current work, for example. I’m writing this blog post in a break from my forthcoming graphic article, White Whale on the Go, a Humanimal Doodle (For more on these, please see my Humanimal post or the Humanimal section of my website. ) Here’s the story this doodle tells:
The tiny Iñupiat Eskimo village of Point Lay, Alaska depends for its food on beluga and bowhead whales that migrate through. The Iñupiat have dispensation to hunt a small number of whales for subsistence. Scientists trying to learn more about beluga behavior and physiology asked the Iñupiat for access to the whales -- specifically, they asked for help catching whales so they could be tagged with data transmitters that would track their paths, and for tissue and blood samples from recently killed whales. These samples were used to compare the wild beluga with belugas kept at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut.
After several years of cooperative work, two Point Lay men were invited to visit Mystic to see the labs where the research was conducted and to visit the aquarium’s whales. Enthralled, they asked that other people from Point Lay be invited, and they were quite specific about whom: high schoolers. Not only did the men want the cooperative effort to continue -- because scientists are monitoring the effects on whales of climate change, expanded shipping lanes, and increased drilling for oil -- but they wanted the next generation to lock things in. Moreover, they hoped their young people might be inspired to go into science.
This year, four Point Lay girls visited Mystic, and I drove up to meet them and to talk to the scientists they were working with. I came home with good notes and great quotes, and now I had to turn them into a visual story. My Humanimal Doodles are all, uh, doodled, so photographs were out of the question. But I did have photographs showing the girls meeting Mystic’s three beluga whales, wearing chest-high waders to enter the chilly pool.
The prompt for Illustration Friday this week was paisley. I’ve never really been a paisley person, but when I read the word for the week, I thought of a whale illustration I’d done a couple of years ago (probably because I’d just finished some paintings for the ripple project):
Happy Whale
I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do so I just started working. I made paisley-like swirls and filled the centers with fishies, sea turtles and jellyfish. Then a couple of happy accidents happened and I decided to create 2 paisley whales:
Paisley Whale #1 (Unhappy)
Paisley Whale #2 (Singing)
I’ve decided to donate digital prints of these three images to the ripple project. Click here for more info or to purchase these images. Each print is 3″ x 4″ and sells for $10. ALL PROCEEDS go to one of these two non-profit charities: The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies and The International Bird Rescue Research Center. The buyer donates directly to one of the charities, ensuring that all the money goes to the relief effort. They then send the email confirmation and the art is shipped out to them. The copyright notice is for the web only and won’t be on the prints, but they will be signed.
Note: There are still two paintings from my original series available for purchase here (the seagulls and the pelicans). Both paintings are 2.5″ x 3.5″ and are the actual paintings, not prints.
seagulls and pelicans
By: Zoe,
on 2/7/2010
Photo: Longhorndave
Billy’s Bucket by Kes Gray, illustrated by Garry Parsons is both a wonderful celebration of the power of imagination and a warning to parents who do not take their children’s creativity seriously!
All Billy wants for his birthday is a bucket. Not a bike or a computer game. Just a bucket. His parents try unsuccessfully to persuade Billy otherwise but eventually a trip to Buckets-R-Us takes place. Billy returns home utterly delighted. He fills his bucket with water and so begin hours of play.
Every time Billy peers into his bucket he sees different watery worlds – crabs, sharks, divers, perhaps even a mermaid play in the water, and Billy is mesmerised by it all. His parents, on the other hand, are dismissive. They start off by humouring Billy (“What’s in your bucket now, Billy?” giggled his mum. “Seven sea lions and a walrus,” said Billy. “Of course there are, Billy,” laughed his mum and dad.) but soon they can’t resist teasing him a little; they try to persuade Billy to lend them his bucket so that they can use it for some household chores. Billy refuses. He loves his bucket and the worlds it contains. Indeed he goes to bed that night very happy – his bucket is “the best present in the world.”
The following morning Billy comes down to the kitchen to find his bucket missing. Although distraught it is Billy who ends up having the last laugh – it turns out his Dad borrowed the bucket to wash the car…and, well, let’s just say Billy’s Dad is now left looking somewhat foolish for not believing in Billy and the power of his imagination.
Please try to find a copy of Billy’s Bucket – the story is a fantastic testament to the power of imagination and a gentle reminder to those of us who might at times be far too sensible to believe in a little bit of magic. Kids will love it that Billy was proved right – there were, after all, marvellous sea creatures in his bucket, and parents will share a wry smile of recognition at the behaviour of Billy’s Mum and Dad. I also love the story for its delight in a simple birthday gift – a bucket – not a Wii or a trip to Disneyland – and in this respect it reminds me of Katie Cleminson’s Box of Tricks (which I reviewed here). Another book which could work well along side Billy’s Bucket is Polly Dunbar’s Penguin (which I reviewed here). All three are lovely birthday-themed books which rejoice in a child’s ability to imagine and create personal narratives.
The ill
By: Robin Brande,
on 7/12/2009
I just read the most beautiful article on the apparent change in human-whale relations–the whales seem to be courting us. Read the whole article here, but for now enjoy this snippet from the very end: “As Beto spoke, I thought of another bit of interspecies cooperation involving humpbacks that I recently read about. A female [...]
By: Vanessa Brantley Newton,
on 6/10/2009
Every summer Vasthi looked forward to going to the
beach to see big Tobiah. He also looked forward
to seeing Vasthi for he knew that she would
always take care of dental hygiene. After his
four point check up Vasthi would put on a show.
hee hee hee!
By: Anne Ishii,
on 12/10/2008
Two Greenpeace activists in Japan tried to expose a whale meat scandal subsidized by the government, and were arrested for their efforts.
From The Japan Times:
“According to Greenpeace, whalers aboard the ship have long had the right to choice cuts from the government- subsidized whaling catch, which they sell on the black market, bypassing virtually all controls. “According to our informants, some men were taking up to 20 or 30 boxes of the high-value ‘uneso’ whale meat, with each box worth up to $3,000,” says the group’s international spokesman, Dave Walsh. “That means they were skimming huge sums of money from a taxpayer-funded program. It’s a scandal that needs to be investigated.”
Sato and Suzuki took these allegations to journalists at a press conference that won worldwide attention, before handing the meat over to the police in May and demanding an investigation. The authorities responded by ignoring the claims against the Nisshin Maru and its operator Kyodo Senpaku, and launching a ferocious campaign against Greenpeace.
A total of 38 policemen were reportedly assigned from Aomori to investigate the “theft” case, plus a large squad of cops and special detectives from Tokyo, who rejected Sato and Suzuki’s argument that the meat was borrowed to prove a point, not stolen.”
By: Mayra Calvani,
on 1/23/2008
By: Mayra Calvani,
on 1/11/2008
By: Paintgranny,
on 6/27/2007
21 Comments on Spicy chorizo and tomato soup, last added: 7/12/2007
So pretty… Not sure if you saw my post on the kidlit listserve but I am collecting ideas related to books as gifts for a class I am teaching for parents at the end of the month. I will be sure to include links to your series!
Oh Stacey, now I’m feeling quite stupid! Yes, I did see your question and thought I didn’t have anything in particular to offer. It’s frightening how the brain doesn’t work sometimes! Anyway, every Sunday between now and Christmas I’ll be linking to an illustrator’s shop. I’m sure some US illustrators must sell direct too?
Love the brooches, Zoe! I have a Christmas gift post scheduled for 21/11, so I’ll link to the last one you do before that.
Thanks Susan! I look forward to seeing your Christmas gift post.