Granny's Clan: A Tale of Wild Orcas

by Sally Hodson, Ann Jones (Illustrator)

Overview

Meet the orca Granny and her family in this beautiful picture book based on the real-life orca clan! Inspire any eager young reader with lyrical text that combines real science with a heartwarming story of family.

Like grandmothers everywhere, Granny the orca (killer whale) babysits, teaches, and plays with her orca grandchildren. She teaches them how to breathe through their blowholes, hunt for salmon, communicate by making sounds underwater, and how to escape from danger.

Perfect for any parent, grandparent, or teacher looking for a kids book about whales, mammal book for kids, or to help introduce marine biology to eager young minds.

Backmatter includes more information on Granny and orcas:

• Fascinating Definitions: what is blubber? Echolocation? Blow holes? A pod?
• How Orcas Live: how orcas communicate, how they breathe, what they eat, and more!
• How Scientists Learn about Granny's Clan: scientists collect all kinds of information on Granny and her family…including looking at their poop!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781584691723
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	10/01/2012
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.10(d)
Lexile:	AD690L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 10 Years

About the Author

Whether watching whales with kids or teaching a class, Dr. Sally Hodson loves to tell stories. Using the power of story, she hopes to inspire people to care for our planet and the animals who share it. Sally has taught elementary, secondary and special needs students, designed curriculum and trained teachers. She earned her doctoral degree at the University of Colorado, with a focus on environmental education, ecology and animal behavior. While the Executive Director at The Whale Museum, she helped coordinate the successful rescue and release of Springer, a wild orphaned orca. Sally lives on a Pacific Northwest island among cedar forests, bald eagles, and the orcas of Granny's clan. To find lots more about orcas, see her website, www.sallyhodson.com.

Ann Jones taught elementary school for many years, but her love for art found full expression ever since she moved to Orcas Island, Washington, in 1992. She lives there with her husband, three cats, and thousands of honey bees. Her studio is very near to the ocean. She likes to work with soft, colorful pastels, using her hands and fingers to apply the paint—a very tactile experience. She was just getting ready to start painting Granny for this book when she heard the distinctive sound of orcas exhaling. She ran to the shore and there was part of the clan, only about 20 feet away. What an auspicious start! Because individual orcas are identified by their fins, color patches and other markings, Ann made a point of painting the individual IDs so readers can identify the main characters in the story visually. www.annjonesstudio.com.

Editorial Reviews

PreS-Gr 2—Hodson details a pod of orcas' celebration of the birth of a baby, their hunt for salmon and how they share the fish, and how the 100-year-old matriarch teaches two of her great-grandchildren to scan for echoes of salmon. She tells how the whales "perform" for the people on nearby boats, then stop to doze, awakening to Granny's loud song, which attracts other families that join them to form a noisy, playful "superpod." Finally, the huge group nears the shoreline filled with people, and orcas and humans sing together. While there is too much fictionalization to recommend this book as nonfiction, two appended pages offer information on the identification of individual whales, anatomy, echolocation, food, and communication with one another and with people, and a list of informative websites-all great report sources. Using pastels, Jones has created soft panoramas showing whales eating and playing in the Pacific Northwest ocean and bay.—Susan Scheps, formerly at Shaker Heights Public Library, OH

School Library Journal

Hodson's debut introduces children to one matrilineal group of orcas living in the Pacific Northwest, an actual group of whales that has been studied by scientists for over 40 years. What will strike readers most is how familylike the whales are. Granny, believed to be about 100 years old, nudges her newborn grandson to the surface for his first breath of air. She has valuable knowledge of the waters and salmon habits, which she passes on to Suttles and Mako as the group hunts together, sonar clicks helping them "see" their environment. Hodson lightly sketches relationships among the group, the energetic Suttles and Mako both competing and sharing as they learn to hunt, and Ruffles offering a fish to the new mother. In the end, Granny calls many matrilineal groups together to a superpod gathering, the whales greeting one another before responding vocally to the Orca Sing of the people lining the coast. While many descriptions evoke beautiful images, short, choppy sentences sometimes mar the flow of the text. Orcas are identified by the shapes of their dorsal fins and the saddles on their backs, and Jones does a nice job of depicting Granny and Ruffles, though the other family members are less individuated. Backmatter tells of the real clan of orcas that inspired the story and fleshes out the information presented. Certain to get children interested in learning more about this endangered and very social species. (list of websites, list of further materials available at publisher's website) (Informational picture book. 5-9)

Kirkus Reviews