a detailed discussion of various aspects of the ocean/sea, the animals, our explorations, and more
1 book

While I did not read this book, I did spend much time studying the type of information that it contains. The information documented about oceans is very broad. The author covers both plants and animals that can be found in the various oceans. The photos are spectacular. They are large in scale and the colors are bold and vivid. Children will be naturally drawn to the subject matter, and find the pictures even more compelling. Included are illustrations which help the reader envision the scale and size of ocean creatures; there are line drawings of fish within line drawings of fish. The book is structured beginning with a table of contents and ending with a glossary and an index. There a page at the end giving the photographers credit for their work. There wasn’t a resource page so I’m not sure about the author’s qualifications. The text is uncomplicated. Children will be so fascinated by the photographs that they will want to read the text just to find out more about the pictures. Some pictures cover a two page spread with a small caption detailing the photo. One contains a large artist rendering of a diagram of an ocean vessel complete with arrows detailing the parts of the vehicle. Other pages have these horizontal charts detailing the particular subject under discussion. Still other pages contain side bars which contain a mini glossary and additional information like a book that may interest the reader or related topics for further study. Some even contain information that the reader should be cautious of. Elementary students will enjoy the book for the photographs. Some may even take the time to read it, but I suspect that many will browse through it and read sections of interest. It will appeal to student of all ages. It could be used in a science class. Since the material contained is so broad, teaching ideas might include: oceans, ocean life, vacation spots, animals and plants found in oceans, continental drift, and history of ocean exploration, including explorers. ( )

A colorful book designed for young audiences, it has bright photographs on every page to draw the reader in. This would be a good resource to introduce students into the world of Oceans and Seas by attracting them with it's rich colorful layout and easy to read blurbs of information. There is very little actual text, but the little blurbs contain concise information. Each "chapter" begins with a handful of questions to prime the reader, then offers the answers in the pictures and blurbs that follow. The end of the book has a glossary and index to help the reader.
This is not the kind of book I would read from cover to cover to a whole-class. It is more suitable for students to examine on their own and use as a possible resource for a project or just for educational entertainment. I would include it in a library for a science classroom. ( )

Ocean and Sea by Steve Parker from the Scholastic "discover more" series is a survey book about the worlds aquatic habitats. The book includes information on subtopics such as a scientific overview and the natural history of oceans, descriptions of the five oceans, islands within them, and the explorers that discovered them, peoples interaction with oceans and seas whether recreational, profitable, or natural disasters, and finally a section on the threats to our oceans including pollution and global warming. So one could say the organization of this book is topical. The subtopics seem to be pertinent to the overall subject matter and do a good job of summing up the major issues concerning the world's oceans and seas.
These five subtopics are represented by five chapters called "All About Oceans", "Oceans of the World", "Life in the Ocean", "People and Oceans", and "Oceans Under Threat". The chapter title page effectively includes key questions that are answered by the content of the following chapter. Each of these chapters includes more specific subtopics.. For example, the chapter "All About Oceans" contains subdivisions called ocean waters, ancient ocean, ocean today, what's inside the ocean, water on the move and oceans edge including information about light and seeing under the surface, oceanic pressure, types of animals at different depths, the natural history of earth's oceans, current ocean formations, water cycles, tides, and beaches and sand. These more specific subtopics include sections with information usually centered around an illustration, photograph, diagram or chart. These sections headed by varying sizes of larger print often have text in the form of captions referring to the extensive visual aids being used to present the information. Within the arrangement of subsections there are sometimes interesting facts that are included separately, shown in bigger often bold print.
The table of contents includes the name of each chapter and the page at which further subtopics are found plus the glossary, index, and credits and acknowledgments. There are also sidebars and many pages that offer more appended information intermittently throughout the book. These sidebars include further reading relevant to that pages content, relevant locations and landmarks, activities for further investigation, things not to do (usually to protect the environment), keywords for web searches and relevant terms and their definitions called hot words and mini glossary. Another feature in the beginning of the book, called "How to Discover More" describes the format for the reader. This section breaks down each element found within the pages. These elements include what is called the spread heading (which is the subdivision of the topic addressed by that chapter), introduction, fact boxes, fantastic facts, and the "more here" sidebar column. The visual aids are exemplified and categorized as stat spreads, history spreads (often with maps), and photographic spreads. The photographs are plentiful and quite captivating. Sometimes a two page spread will be focused entirely on one photograph with only a few discrete facts in a caption.
The scope of this book is somewhat broad referring to many aspects of the worlds oceans. While covering many different issues concerning the topic, detail is still apparent through specific facts and good concise description of concepts. The book is able to effectively address a wide scope while still offering focused information with a reasonable amount of depth considering the length and complexity of the text. The target audience would probably be upper elementary and middle school. The language is clear and direct but descriptive. This quoted section serves as a good example: "Sunlight is made up of all colors in the rainbow, but each color fades at a different rate with depth. Red gets fainter fastest, then orange, and so on. So the deeper you dive the bluer-and darker- it becomes. Many animals are adapted to detect blue light best." Accompanied by a type of bar graph diagram, this concept is described clearly and concisely using a limited amount of space and text. There don't seem to be many expectations of background information as the book offers basic as well as complex knowledge. The tone of the writing would be considered neutral but sometimes gains a feeling of the fantastic especially with specific amazing facts. I think this is appropriate in attempting to impress the wonder that is inherent in the natural world and specifically the worlds underwater ecosystems. The tone becomes somewhat exciting but does not border on sensationalism.
The author's qualifications are not described to portray accuracy and there is no list of references included, but the author's name is supplemented by a consultant on the title page. This consultant from the Census of Marine Life does support the dependability of the information contained within the book. The text is very current having been published in January of 2012.
This book has an incredible cover putting the potential reader face to face with a sea turtle backed by a beautifully vibrant coral reef and many wandering fish. The title is oriented vertically along the side and is blue imbedded in silver. At the bottom above the authors name the reader is invited to "Dive into Earth's most spectacular habitat." This cover arrangement is extremely appealing and certainly made me want to read the book. The back cover offers the name of the publisher and series with a short description of the books subject matter accented by two photographs. The back cover also advertises digital information that supplements the book and can be accessed on the internet.
I really like this book and could really imagine using it in a future course that I will be teaching. I am focusing on middle school science which largely includes life and environmental sciences. So this book would be very relevant for my instruction. I could use this text in many ways. The book could serve as a reference for students studying many different aspects of the earth's oceans. For example if the students were doing an activity that required them to do research on the oceans, many important facts could be found here. The book could also be used in a more comprehensive way. I could see designing a unit around this book where it is used as a textbook for a series of lessons. Students could find background information in this book on many aspects of an oceans unit and further reading could be found and more in depth activities could be designed to delve deeper into the concepts outlined here. In this way the book and its chapters could be presented to the class on a projector to introduce and engage while following up with other related supplemental information. ( )