Coral Reefs

April 15, 2024
Preschool-Grade 3 From the Sills' well-regarded About Habitats series, this colorful volume introduces young children to the complex, diverse ecosystems of coral reefs. Sentence by sentence and picture by picture, the book compares hard and soft corals and discusses the three main types of hard coral reefs. These reefs grow mainly in warm, shallow coastal areas of the ocean, where they reduce the size of large waves and protect adjacent landmasses as well as many sea creatures. But the reefs themselves, once damaged, are very slow to heal. Currently, many reefs are endangered because of water pollution, warmer water temperatures, and overfishing. Well designed for reading aloud to young children, the main section of the book features a relatively short, large-print text on each left-hand page, facing a full-page watercolor painting on the right. Wildlife artist John Sill provides vivid, lifelike watercolor paintings featuring a variety of reefs. The back matter reprints each scene in miniature, along with additional facts on the topic. A beautifully illustrated, informative introduction to a habitat that most children will never see firsthand.

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May 15, 2024
A nuts-and-bolts introduction to an undersea habitat. The latest book in this long-running series explores coral reefs, which make up less than 1% of the ocean floor but provide habitats for more than 25% of marine life. In unadorned prose, Cathryn Sill lays out the basics about coral reefs--how they grow and survive, the varieties of corals and types of reefs, the marine creatures that interact with them, and the threats they face. As with previous books in this series, simple sentences appear on each verso, along with a caption for the full-page watercolor illustration on the recto by John Sill, Cathryn's husband. One of the more interesting spreads--"Corals also get food by hunting at night"--includes a lovely split screen-style illustration, depicting sun coral by day and then by night, its tentacles extended to capture zooplankton. Close-ups of corals and a diagram of the life cycle of Staghorn coral help round out the work. The book concludes with a rather quiet "Coral reefs are important places that need to be protected," which misses the urgency found in the backmatter, where readers will need to go to find out why. Reliable, plainspoken information on a crucial ecosystem. (afterword, glossary, further reading, websites, map of major coral reefs of the world) (Informational picture book. 3-7)

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