The Whales - Softcover

CYNTHIA RYLANT is the acclaimed author of many beloved books for young people, including the Mr. Putter & Tabby series, the novel Missing May, which received the Newbery Medal, and the Little Whistle series. She lives on an island in Puget Sound, Washington. ARTHUR HOWARD is best known as the illustrator of Cynthia Rylant's Mr. Putter & Tabby series. He is also the illustrator of Kathi Appelt's Bubba and Beau series and has written and illustrated three picture books of his own: Hoodwinked; When I Was Five, an ABA's Pick of the Lists and a Crayola Kids Best Book; and Cosmo Zooms, an IRA-CBC Children's Choice. He lives in New York City.

"In the blackness of the Black Sea,/ the whales are thinking today./ Thinking of those things/ that matter most to them:/ friends, family, supper./ A song they used to know." Using language that both anthropomorphizes and sentimentalizes the creatures of the sea, Rylant's text seems more overblown and portentous than thoughtful. She announces that whales "love their children," and that when baby whales "see their first sky [they] gasp/ at the loveliness of living." Like "angels appearing in the sky," she intones, "whales are proof of God." The text is best when describing the wonder human beings feel when observing whales, and least successful when Rylant skips indiscriminately between factual information and omniscient or self-consciously cute pronouncements ("Past Cape Farewell, they say good-bye..../ And under the Red Sea, their dreams are in color"). Rylant's acrylic illustrations, quaintly painted with natural sea sponges, are hazy, in the same naive style she used for Dog Heaven. Although a chart of whale shapes that repeats the book's illustrations in miniature is included, it provides nebulous anatomical information. Diehard Rylant fans may welcome this mawkish paean, but others will find it a whale of a disappointment. All ages.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.