Ocean: Secrets of the Deep

“A stunning gift book for children fascinated by ocean creatures, habitats and conservation.
Discover menacing sharks, playful dolphins, clownfish, penguins, turtles, whales, shimmering jellyfish, and gargantuan giant squid. Ocean: Secrets of the deep is jam-packed with hundreds of stylish illustrations and many more surprising facts about the world’s marine life.”

Mummy’s Review

Sometimes in life, things all come together just perfectly.  Whilst we were on holiday in Spain, we were playing on the beach and we saw a huge piece of tarpaulin floating in the sea.  Rory and I waded out to get it and to put in into the bin.  Once we had spotted one piece of rubbish, it was like the scales were lifted from our eyes and suddenly we could see so much plastic in the water.  Rory quickly fetched a fishing net and set about doing his bit to clean up the sea.

A few days later, a news alert popped up on my phone to say that Victor Vescovo had broken the record for the deepest ever submarine dive.  He had descended 10,927m (35,849ft)  to the deepest place in the ocean – the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench.  The story was truly amazing as during his time in the water he had discovered new species.  However, a sad sign of the times, as well as making new discoveries, he also found a plastic bag!

Tying both these events together, we were kindly gifted ‘Ocean: Secrets of the Deep’ from What On Earth Books.  It could not have been better timing whilst Rory’s interest had been piqued by his litter picking in Spain and the amazing diving story.

They often say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but when you are a child that’s exactly what you do.  This gorgeous book has a beautifully eye catching cover and the fantastic illustrations continue inside the book.  On many of the pages, the illustrations are numbered with a key explaining what each picture is.  We really enjoyed reading the text and then trying to identify what each illustration was of.

Once we had started reading this book, we really did not want to stop.  The journey into the ocean was truly fascinating and we continued to be amazed by what the book was teaching us.  One fact that we were both amazed by was that we have only explored 10% of the world’s oceans.  90% remains unseen by human eyes! The fact that we have been able to map the entire moon and Mars and 98% of Venus but only 10% of our own ocean is just mind boggling!  What else is out there that we don’t know about?

Wonderfully, there was a page about the Mariana Trench, where Victor Vescovo had been diving, with  illustrations of snailfish, sea worms and giant amphipods.  All of which had been seen by Vescovo’s dive.  It really was fantastic to be able to refer to what was happening in the news whilst reading the book.

The book culminates with a section about how to protect the ocean which was perfect for Rory’s new interest in reducing plastic.   You can see how else we’ve been trying to reduce our waste here.

With my teaching head on, I feel it is so important to expose children to a wide variety of high quality reading material – be this stories, non fiction books, comics, manuals – anything that will spark their love of reading.  Ocean: Secrets of Deep will definitely draw in readers both young and old.  It’s a great book to read if you have a little time as it is neatly divided into little sections or a long time if you fancy a real dive into the story of the ocean.  You’ll quickly find that you child is presenting you with fascinating facts about the ocean!

Rory’s Review

Whilst I was on holiday in Spain, I saw how much plastic was in the ocean.  I was angry and flabbergasted.  I was concerned about the sealife which lives in our oceans.

I have been reading this awesome book – Oceans: Secrets of the Deep.  This fascinating book is all about life in the ocean.  It includes a wide variety of topics including ocean creatures, habitats, how we explore the ocean and so much more.  It has fantastic pictures of the sea creatures and tells you about them.  The pictures are brightly coloured and really catch the eye.  I like the way the book tells you about the ancient myths and legends that the sea creatures feature in.  I also enjoyed finding out some interesting, and sometime hilarious, facts about the creatures.  For example, herrings fart to produce bubbles and create high pitched sounds.  Also, did you know that some fish vibrate their bladders to deter attackers!  It really is such an interesting book.

If you love animals or the seaside,  you are going to love this book.  It really will inspire you to keep the ocean healthy.  Maybe you could reduce your plastic and recycle more.  I really recommend Oceans: Secrets of the Deep.  I thoroughly enjoyed it. learned so much and would give it 10/10.