Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Sea Stars: Saltwater Poems
Photographer: Margaret Butschler
Poetry Picture Book
For ages 7 to 12
Boyds Mills Press, 2006 ISBN: 978-1590784297
The ocean is an extraordinary place full of fascinating, beautiful, and unique creatures. We are going to meet just a few of them, diving into blue green water and pushing our way through kelp and seaweed to see what lies beyond. There is a crab who asks us not to think of him just as that "toe-pinching" creature with big claws. He asks us to also look at his perfectly adapted crab person "a star" in his ocean world.
Then there is a sea turtle sailing past in her "wearable home." Here is a creature whose ancestors have quietly and serenely ploughed their way through the world's oceans and seas for thousands of years, mostly unchanged and always seemingly carrying the history of the world on their shells.
In this varied, often amusing, and frequently admiring collection of poems readers will find themselves exploring both ocean worlds and the world of poetry. Readers will be able to see how poetry forms were chosen to suit the creature shown in the accompanying photograph. The author has used both free and rhyming verse, and a pair of "wrestling"starfish are immortalized with a haiku.
The incredible photographs which inspired the poems perfectly portray the magical beauty of some of the world's marine creatures.
