BooksForKidsBlog

Wednesday, June 02, 2021

How Do We See The Sea? My Ocean Is Blue by Darren LeBeuf

What is the ocean? It's too big to be any one thing!

It's the rough wooden boardwalk, warming the girl's walk down to the beach. It's the warm brown sand where she and her mother spread their beach towel, their home base for the day.

THIS IS MY OCEAN.

The ocean is wide, spread across the horizon, but it can be as small as a handful of sea water with a tiny hermit crab in it. It is as dry as driftwood and as wet as a splash in her face as the girl and her mother play in the waves. It's as rotten as a dead fish at the high tide mark, or as fresh as the breeze over the sea oats. It is as sparkly as the sun on the water and as dull as the brown beach sand where she sketches an octopus.

MY OCEAN SPLASHES AND CRASHES AND ECHOES AND SQUAWKS!

Seagulls fuss and flap. There are dolphin smiles as they race with a boat, surfacing and diving. Meanwhile, a pelican facing into the wind on a post is still as still can be.

The ocean is as pink as a wet starfish, as orange as a rusty anchor, and as white as a sun-bleached seashell. But....

MY OCEAN IS MOSTLY BLUE, ENDLESS BLUE.

The ocean is many things, but mostly blue, in Darren LeBeuf's lovely little tone poem to a glorious day beside the sea, My Ocean Is Blue (Kids Can Press, 2020), portrayed with skill in Ashley Barron's mixed-media collaged illustrations, in a picture book that itself is a collage of sensations and feelings. Nothing is better than being a child on a day at the seashore, but this book will take parents reading it aloud down to the sea along with their children. Says Kirkus Reviews, "A joyful marine romp!"

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