Literary Titan Book Award - Gold: 5 Stars
Song of the Blue Whale is a beautifully illustrated children's book that educates readers on whales, whale hunters, ocean pollution, and what we can do to help whales and clean up our water.
This educational picture book surprised me with how many opportunities for learning were packed into so few pages. We're first introduced to a whale with a barnacle on its tail. A cute image accompanied by a short rhyme. But readers are then taken on a trip through the ocean where we learn about the dangers whales face against hunters. With a few short simple rhymes readers are also educated on ocean pollution and provided some simple steps we can all take to help clean up. I can imagine this book being a great piece for teachers to include in their curriculum about marine biology and oceanography. The book is filled with beautiful art pieces of whales in the ocean. Some of my favorite art pieces from this book are from the bottom of the ocean looking up at whales as sunlight comes through the clouds and water. Contrast this with the dramatic scene where whalers are hunting and you really do get to experience the full range and beauty of a whale's life in this book.
Song of the Blue Whale is a picture book that will educate as it entertains young readers. With magnificent art on nearly every page, any child is sure to appreciate the majestic nature of these animals and come away with a better understanding of what whales face in the open ocean.
Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite - 5 Stars
Song of the Blue Whale: Wayne Gerard Trotman's Rhyming Stories is a children's animal picture book written by Wayne Gerard Trotman and illustrated by Nhat Hao Nguyen. She's a majestic blue whale swimming through the deep blue waters of the Southern Ocean. Her kind is the largest of all creatures living, and they have been hunted nearly to extinction by men seeking to profit off their blubber, baleen, whale oil, and meat. Even today, they are threatened, as are all sea creatures, by man's pollution of the seas, stray nets that bind and strangle, trash that kills, and even now there are the poachers and rogue countries who lust after the destruction of the world's most magnificent creature. What can kids do to help? Clean up crews that scavenge along the shores can minimize what is taken out to sea. Recycling plastics, metal, and paper goods help keep the environment and the waters healthy. We still do have blue whales gracing our planet, but only if we care enough -- if we each do our part.
Wayne Gerard Trotman's Song of the Blue Whale introduces the most majestic of living creatures, the blue whale, to young readers in a story that conveys the beauty and power of the blue whale as well as the loneliness experienced by the too-few survivors of man's depredations. The plaintive cries of the whale as she reaches out to those surviving and those departed friends is unforgettable and haunting. The author's rhyming verses work so well to impart the enormity of the subject and help children learn new vocabulary as they expand their knowledge of the natural world. Nhat Hao Nguyen's illustrations capture the blue whale and its environment so very well. Each picture is a marvel, and many are well worth framing for a child's bedroom walls. Song of the Blue Whale: Wayne Gerard Trotman's Rhyming Stories is most highly recommended.