5 Books That Explore the Deep Sea

I Wonder Why the Sea is Salty and Other Questions About the Oceans, by Anita Ganeri
If you’ve ever gone to the beach with a curious kid who peppers you with questions all day and you’re not so sure on the answers, this is the book for you. Ganeri answers dozens of questions such as “What makes waves roll?” and “How deep is the ocean?” with clear explanations and lavish illustrations—some of them realistic, and others cartoons that share interesting related facts. For example, Ferdinand Magellan, whose crew was the first to circumnavigate the globe, ran out of food so they “had to eat cooked leather.”

Commotion in the Ocean, by Giles Andreae and David Wojtowycz
This bouncy, colorful, rhyming book captures the spirit of a myriad of sea creatures, from the crab (“The crab likes walking sideways/And I think the reason why/Is to make hismelf look sneaky/And pretend that he’s a spy.”) to the fish-chasing swordfish (“When I start feeling hungry,/I skewer a few on my sword.”).

The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor, by Joanna Cole & Bruce Degen
Leave it to Ms. Frizzle to properly introduce her class to the ocean. The kids in her class deserve a trip to the beach, with all the hard work they do creating projects and writing papers that are featured in the sidebars of the main story. Ms. Frizzle drives the Magic School Bus right into the water, where it transforms into a submarine, a glass-bottom boat, and a giant surfboard as they explore plankton, whale sharks, and more.

Hello Ocean/Hola Mar, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, Yanitzia Canetti and Mark Astrella
This charming book about a girl’s all-day adventure at the beach is available in English or in a bilingual English/Spanish version that’s perfect for kids who are fluent in Spanish or who are just beginning to study the language. Muñoz Ryan, the award-winning author of Esperanza Rising, Echo, and dozens more books, here tells of a girl’s ecstatic encounter with the ocean in simple, sensory verse. She plays in tide pools and splashes in the surf, while the light changes as the day grows long in Mark Astrella’s lush paintings.

The New Ocean: The Fate of Life in a Changing Sea, by Bryn Barnard
This stark and urgent new book posits that human activity has affected life in the oceans so radically that they are becoming something quite different from the oceans we once knew. Familiar species will give way to those who can endure acidification and global warming. Barnard addresses the concerns facing a number of ocean dwellers, illustrating each with lovely, somber paintings. “Jellyfish can thrive anywhere,” she writes. Jellyfish evolved when the oceans had little oxygen, and so they are weathering the changing conditions better than most. Sea turtles, on the other hand, often become trapped, sickened, or wounded because of the pollutants that end up in the water, from plastic six-pack holders to oil. Some of the hard facts Barnard shares in this important book are sad, but can motivate kids to do what they can to help the oceans, from using less plastic to talking their parents into buying an electric car.