THE CALL OF THE RUNNING TIDE

A sympathetic, realistic portrait of a lobster-trapping family on Swan's Island, Maine, showing their activities throughout the year. Graff and Howard depict all of the Joyces—men, women, boys, and girls—working long, hard hours at the trade they love. Their life, though stable, is not static: people come and go; jobs change and they have to adjust. Graff's style is very expressive of feelings, which may induce readers to consider what it would be like to live this way. The lovely b&w photos are so well composed and well placed that no captions are necessary; the eye easily alternates between words and images. Environmental problems are barely hinted at—e.g., the overharvesting of food fish that led to their disappearance and the state regulation of lobstering. The book's most useful feature may be its clear presentation of how lobsters are caught, though nothing in the CIP data denotes this as a subject. An unusually evocative portrayal of a region. (Nonfiction. 10-18)