Sea Surprise

by Leo Landry

Overview

Eel was ill. He did not wake up feeling very electric.
"Oh, drat!" he said grumpily. "I've lost my zap!"

An adorably funny undersea adventure for beginning readers

Poor Eel. Kate and Dave want to help their friend get his zap back. All they need is a plan-one that doesn't involve biting things, even though Dave's shark teeth are itching to chomp something.

With lots of help from the other sea creatures, the friends come up with the perfect way to jolt Eel's zap back into him. A surprise party is sure to do the trick! But the party starts off with a shock that no one expected.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429937368
Publisher:	Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Publication date:	06/01/2005
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	64
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	7 - 9 Years

About the Author

Leo Landry, the author of the picture books Oh, Baby! and The Snow Ghosts, manages the Children's Book Shop in Brookline, Massachusetts. Mr. Landry lives with his family and his cat and dog in a renovated barn from the 1880s in Easton, Massachusetts.

LEO LANDRY is the author/illustrator of several books for children, including Fat Bat and Swoop and Sea Surprise. He lives with his family in Easton, Massachusetts.

Read an Excerpt

Sea Surprise
1A Morning Swim 
 
It was a cool, wet day at the bottom of the sea. Above the waves, a storm was brewing. Far below, safe from the storm, Kate and Dave were out for a morning swim along the coral reef."What shall we do today, Dave?" asked Kate, flipping her tail idly."Let's bite something," said Dave. Dave was bored, and boredom always made his teeth itch."No," said Kate. "Why do you always want to go around biting things?""It is what I do," answered Dave simply."Well, it is not what I do," said Kate. "Let's go and visit Eel instead. I haven't seen him since last week, and I miss his electric-eel glow.""We could visit Eel and bite something," Dave muttered to himself.The two friends swam off together toward Eel's house.Copyright © 2005 by Leo Landry

Editorial Reviews

Landry's (Eat Your Peas, Ivy Louise!, reviewed May 9) spry if slight underwater tale opens as mermaid Kate asks her buddy Dave, a shark, what they should do that day. Dave spontaneously responds, "Let's bite something." (He "was bored, and boredom always made his teeth itch.") Dave's desire to bite becomes a recurring theme that supplies a large dose of the story's humor. On a visit to Eel, an electrical eel who laments that he's lost his "zap," Dave offers to help by giving the eel's tail "a good bite." Instead the ailing fellow promises the hungry shark a bite of plankton pie if he and Kate can "help him get his zap back." While the duo works on a plan to do just that, a despondent Eel convinces himself that they have forgotten all about him. Though their own plan misfires, all ends well and, in the process, Dave learns a lesson "to be a bit more cautious when biting." Brief chapters, simple sentences and subtle repetition make this a good choice for independent readers eager to plunge into early chapter books. Landry's rudimentary halftone artwork illustrates this light lark. Ages 7-10. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 1-3--When an electric eel loses his zap, it's up to Kate the mermaid and Dave the shark to find a cure. Dave eventually comes up with an idea: with the help of Kate and all of their ocean friends, he organizes a party to surprise Eel into zapping again. However, when this plan doesn't work, it's the shark's need to chomp that inadvertently helps Eel to return to normal. This beginner chapter book includes simple and complex sentences with words up to a moderate degree of difficulty. The familiar plot is given a bit of humor by Dave's repeated desire to chew on everything in sight. The black-and-white illustrations have a grainy and unappealing quality. Overall, this tale of friendship pairs an uninspired text with flat and lackluster art.-Catherine Callegari, San Antonio Public Library, TX Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

In this unusually cast undersea tale for recent Easy Reader graduates, friends help out when Eel wakes up one morning without his electric zing. Those friends include Kate, a young mermaid, and Dave, a shark with the compellingly simple philosophy that biting solves any problem. Together they organize a surprise party that, thanks to a well-timed bolt of lightning topside, culminates in a literally shocking climax that leaves Eel recharged. Landry adds the occasional item of human furniture or clothing to his simply drawn marine scenes, outfitting Eel, for instance, with a baseball cap that he dons after morosely crawling out of bed. Eel's presence notwithstanding, the general level of silliness doesn't quite have the wattage of Denys Cazet's or Deborah Cronin's barnyard tales, but young readers willing to take the plunge will be amused. (Fiction. 8-10)

Kirkus Reviews