Blog #4

Atlantic

Written and illustrated by: G. Brian Karas

Penguin Group, 2002

29 pages

Informational

I chose this book because it caught my eye while I was in the Houston Cole Library on campus.  The illustration on the front intrigued me to open the book and read it.  This book is all about the Atlantic Ocean.  The story tells facts about the ocean from the perspective of the ocean.  The Atlantic Ocean is personified as a human such being described having feelings, having fingers, having a family, and going places.  The book talks about the ocean’s geography, beaches and gulfs, weather, the forms its water takes, ships, fishermen, art, and animals.  The last page of the book gives other facts about the Atlantic Ocean.

            The illustrations were created by the author, G. Brian Karas.  The inside cover of the book does not tell the medium the illustrations were created using, but I believe it is done with watercolor paint, acrylic paints,  and colored pencils.  The colors used in the book are very bright and eye-catching.  Karas used many different shades of  blue and green when portraying the ocean.  As I flip though the book, the difference in the color of the water from page to page shows the difference in the bay, the beach, the gulf, and the deep ocean. The pictures in the book are very creative and take the text of the book into deeper thought.  I love the illustration on pages nine and ten.  The author uses arrows to describe the different forms of water found in the ocean across the different continents it spans.

            This book is appropriate for children in third to sixth grade.  I would use this book along with a science lesson.  The science lesson could pull many different elements from the book like the different forms of water, the effect of the moon on bodies of water, or the different animals in or near the ocean.  I could also use this book to talk about the geography of the Atlantic Ocean.  I like this book because of the colorful illustrations, the creative way the facts are presented through personification, and the simplicity of the story.  This book has won no awards.