THE DESERT BENEATH THE SEA

Author McGovern teams up with marine biologist Clark (``the shark lady'') to scuba dive in the Caribbean and record the strange, beautiful creatures that inhabit the shallow, sandy- bottomed ``desert beneath the sea.'' Despite the tedious ``You are there'' technique (``You look carefully at this desert beneath the sea. You see a small pointed pebble''), the resulting text is fairly exciting. Phillips's watercolor art is serviceable but doesn't capture the topic's grandeur—one longs for a photo of the eel garden (hundreds of eels swaying in the current, their tails anchored in a hole in the sandy floor), or of the strange new microscopic species nicknamed the ``jumping grains of sand.'' Still, a vivid first-hand account of a working scientist. Both common and scientific names of animals are given in a pronouncing index, but there are no size references. (Nonfiction. 8-12)