OUT OF THE OCEAN

Relief for the land-locked comes in the form of this book, which delivers the salt smells and sea sounds that accompany beachcombers right to readers’ laps. Frasier (On the Day You Were Born, 1991, not reviewed, etc.) combines full-color seashore photographs and cut-paper shapes in tropical-colored collages. As a mother and daughter walk the beach, the child is fascinated by collecting material things such as shells, beach glass, a wooden shoe, and shark’s eggs. The mother takes in bigger things: the sun, sea turtle tracks, and the wash of waves on the beach. When the little girl protests that those things are always there, her mom explains her secret—“the bigger the thing, the easier it is to forget to see it.” A photographic afterword explains the significance of the beachcombing finds that are pictured, from a wooden shoe to a glass float. Frasier also chronicles the life cycle of the sea turtle, whose tracks she saw, explains how notes in a bottle get transported by ocean currents, and reveals which finds are rare. The value of this treasure hunter’s appreciation is in the notion that real “treasure” is in the looking. (Picture book. 6-9)