The Oceanic Times

The Oceanic Times is very different from any other non-fiction books about marine life that I have read. It has been designed to echo the layout and style of a newspaper, however this is a newspaper with a difference, for its readership appears to be sea creatures themselves! For example, 'complete the quizzes...and send your answers in via whale song to win a year's supply of zooplankton!'. My team of Year 5 reviewers thought it was hilarious. What better way to learn, than when you are laughing! This book contains activities such and mazes and word searches, so would be a fun option for use at home, however it has real potential as a classroom resource, in particular for writing non-fiction texts, where it could provide inspiration and ideas for the creation of pupils' own newspapers or magazines. Whilst many of the activities to fill in are fairly simple, this book is a genuinely rich source of information on marine life, covering such topics as bioluminescence, the increasing acidity of our oceans and the journey that salmon undertake in order to breed. Without a conventional index, research would have to take place in the form of browsing, but my young reviewers were delighted by the facts that they uncovered whilst reading. 32 pages / Recommended for ages 7-11 / Reviewed by Emily Marcuccilli, School Librarian

Suggested Reading Age 7+

As soon as you see the jazzy and humorous front cover, this is a book you want to pick up and look at. It is a cross between a non-fiction, newspaper and activity book, with the headline 'All the news from under the sea'. Using only one colour, blue of course, it covers a large assortment of interesting and sometimes slightly wacky aspects of the sea - have you ever heard of a yeti crab? - very well named by the way! Each page covers a slightly different angle, starting most importantly, with the pollution and human impact on the world's oceans. Each page has facts, written in a very informal news style, alongside diagrams and pictures with activities to do in the book. For example, there are 'continue the pattern', word-searches, dot to dot and drawings, all crammed into the pages. My reservations about this book are for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the nature of the activities - you probably do not want a book that has been written on in class. Secondly the text is very informal, and it would be difficult to find information from the contents- e.g. a page entitled Acid Attack probably has very little meaning for many children. The style is chatty and humorous, but not the usual style for a non-fiction text. 'You might think polyps are pathetic, tiny and harmless. And that's probably the last thing you'll think, because you'll be DEAD.' This would be very appealing for some children and I can see there is an audience for this type of book. The colour scheme may prevent some children from accessing the text very easily, some pages with white on blue text are harder to read and colour-blind children may have difficulty with some aspects too. There is also a miss match between the text level in terms of readability and the activities, for example the sequencing which is very easy, next to text about echolocation. Having said that, the book proved very popular in my house with my 10 year old and it would make a really different and engaging gift for a curious child; it made me laugh as it costs five squid! 32 pages / Ages 6-10 years / Reviewed by Jacqueline Harris, teacher.

Suggested Reading Age 7+