The Sea Knows

This beautifully illustrated poem from co-authors McGinty and Havis (his debut book) uses opposites to explore the vibrant diversity of the ocean. “The sea knows spots, / The sea knows shiny. / The sea knows smooth, / The sea knows spiny.” Huge blue whales swim through swarms of tiny krill. An arctic fishing boat floats on the frigid surface while its anchor sinks lower than the hidden icebergs below. Waves build to enormous heights and lightning flashes over turbulent water as the crests “tower” and the sea experiences stormy “power.” In a moment of particular intertwining of poetic text with Laberis’s dynamic digital illustration, “The sea knows silver, and green, and blue and blue and blue” as the illustrations depict an aerial view of the ocean that zooms out further and further, at each level displaying more of the ocean’s shades of blue. At the end of the book, six and a half pages of material repeat each line of the poem and elaborate on the line with additional facts, ranging from observations about the size of whales to the number of artifacts lost at sea to harnessing electricity from the sea. While insightful and even fascinating, these are text dense and require flipping back and forth to the relevant page of the poem to fully appreciate—acknowledging the concern that the additional text could have detracted from the illustrations or interrupted the poem, this information might be enjoyed more by readers as smaller snippets available on each relevant page.