What Sea Creature Is This?

This accessible introduction to more than a dozen undersea creatures is framed as a guessing game (“What sea creature is this, pretty as a flower?”). The answers appear directly underneath along with Allen’s writeups of such animals as wrasses, anemones, sea cucumbers, and parrotfish. Brown contributes two styles of illustration: realistic portraits of the animals take center stage (though the large typefaces used are also quite dominant), while circular insets in a style reminiscent of Simon Basher’s books are more whimsical—a sea snake appears as a circus juggler, a flashlight fish is recast (somewhat inexplicably) as Marilyn Monroe—riffing on the metaphors in Allen’s prose. Ages 4–9. (June)