Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas by Molly Bang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I could have used this book years ago when we were doing an inquiry project on oceans, and we could hardly find anything on plankton. This is a great book for making single-celled phytoplankton into an interesting thing to look at and think about.
This book reminds me of Virginia Lee Burton's Life Story in its storytelling and composition style. It emphasizes the beauty of the life cycles and the organisms themselves, but without making them cute or non-dangerous.
This book also has the extended 'fact section' at the end where the storytelling voice is broken and shifts straight to an informational text structure for 2-3 pages. Lu Benke was wondering yesterday what practical needs editors and publishers might have for insisting on this section at the end of these books. This book is cowritten by a biologist, so there's some reputability to the science. But the fact that the book presents no sources is a liability--minimally on its credibility, but more so on its usefulness in inquiry. If there's a scientist on board, can't she show us what some of the best sources are for further exploration of plankton?
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