Celebrate this unseasonable weather with new books about the seashore for kids!

Looking for Seabirds by Sophie Webb

To human eyes, the remote Aleutian Islands of Alaska

look barren and rocky.  The waters seem cold, the high winds intolerable,

and the seas rolling. Yet to seabirds of the northern hemisphere, these

waters are idyllic, a mosaic of habitats teeming with underwater food and

alive with currents of wind for soaring.

Joan Sophie Webb on a voyage in search of seabirds. Just as she did with 

her ward winning My Season with Penguins, she once again inspires our

curiosity.  As she watches for, writes about, and paints the

graceful Mottled Petrel, the huge Black-footed Albatross, or the clownish Tufted

Puffin, she makes tangible the delicacy yet hardiness of these seabirds -

creatures that have been on the earth much longer than humans yet remain vulnerable to

disturbances in the health of the ocean.

The Whales Scientists by Fran Hodgkins

They began as land creatures.  Then, for more plentiful

food, or so scientists believe, whales made the water their

home and evolved into the colossal, majestic creatures of the

sea that we know today - the same majestic creatures that man

learned to hunt and kill:first for food, then for oil, soap, candles, furniture, and

even wasp-waist corsets.  Rich in meat, blubber, bone, and baleen, the 

whale served so many purposes for humans that its stranding was seen as a gift

from the sea.

But now, with their numbers diminished worldwide, whales have become

the subject of scientific study.  Now humans hunt instead for a deeper

understanding of cetaceans. Now scientists are trying to solve the

mystery of whale strandings. 

Edward hopper Summer at the Seashore 

Edward hopper created not only some of the most

iconic images of American life in the city but also painted

many landscapes and works inspired by the seaside.  

Edward Hopper: Summer at the Seashore takes readers on

a trip along the coast of New England, where he spent the

summer months painting sailboats, lighthouses, seascapes, and

white clapboard houses.  This book brings together a selection

of Hopper's most memorable and appealing paintings, watercolors and drawings.

Far from Shore by Sophie Webb

From a boat over extremely deep waters, the vast sea appears

empty. But as the naturalist and artist Sophie Webb shows us, it is full of 

fascinating - yet difficult-to-study - life.  In a little corner of the

ship's lab, with her water jar duct-taped to the counter, Sophie Webb sits

and paints and journals, even when the ship bounces and rocks from winds 

and waves.  She chronicles all the strange life that she studies and

marvels at in these waters - the tropical Bryde's (broodas) whale, the leaping

manta rays, a frigatebird with a sea snake.

Sophie and her shipmates also count and collect samples of life in these

deep waters, from seabirds to dolphins, from winged fish to whales. Only their

long term monitoring can ultimately help scientists determine the health

of the remarkable creatures who need the clean deep ocean to survive.