Shimmer & Splash: The Sparkling World of Sea Life by Jim Arnosky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
What was interesting about this addition to Arnosky's prolific list of titles was the personal everyday writing. He clearly identified that this was an exploration of sea animals mostly based on wading and rowing in small boats near shore. This made it seem accessible. But there were some inconsistencies. While he started out setting this up as an 'anyone can explore the sea' book, he then spent a few pages on animals I wouldn't get to see without a seagoing boat or other equipment. By self-identifying as a 'naturalist' and sticking with the first person voice, he doesn't have to turn so strongly to expert sources. I like the term naturalist, because it suggests someone with professional skills outside the sciences who turns these skills to the study of nature.
He broke voice for a couple of the spreads, which I didn't like. Just when I was digging his first person voice, he slipped into third person description for an entire animal. Also, he could have pared words like 'suddenly' and 'very'--clear narratives and descriptions don't need these words. There was some clunkiness to the prose due to these kinds of issues.
He included several types of text features. The first person narratives were offset both by paragraph-length captions and small captions and labels. This is good differentiation. But I would be interested in seeing the first person voice in the smaller text features, too, because those are the ones less strong readers are likely to do well with--and then they'd get that dose of voice.
The foldouts were great for expanding the visual experience. The expansive spread of a full-size picturebook is still a main challenge to the ebook market, and this will be true for a few years into the future. There's nothing like a full-color double-page spread with its 11x17 span, and then with foldouts on top of that...forgetaboutit. Until we are living the tech from Minority Report, paper picturebooks are superior to anything on a tablet. Although, once again, if anyone is reading I encourage you to look at what Marvel Comics has done to scaffold the reading of comic books in their iphone and android app.
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