cover image Whales, the Nomads of the Sea

Whales, the Nomads of the Sea

Helen Roney Sattler. Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Books, $16 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-688-05587-5

The collaborators who created Sharks, the Super Fish have turned their talents to another of the ocean's inhabitantsthe whale. Powerful pictures convey just how mighty these creatures are, but it is Sattler's observations that involve readers from the start; she compares the way whales play with the people on boats to the way people play with kittens, and says that after looking a whale in the eye, she needed to know more about this species. Half the book is devoted to a glossary of the various types of whales. The tone of this is a bit more scholarly than Gilda Berger's recent Whales and therefore slightly less accessible to casual readers. But like its companion book on sharks, this is a valuable source to be read and pored over again and again. Ages 8-up. (November)