Sea Horse: The Shyest Fish in the Sea (review)

With its involvingly detailed illustrations and a text perfectly attuned to the early elementary set, this is an exemplary introduction to the fish that breaks the rules of fishiness. Butterworth employs slightly oversized blue font to trace the life cycle of the Barbour's sea horse, lingering a tad longer over child-pleasing information on self-defense, male sea horse pregnancy, and locomotion through and anchorage in turbulent waters of the coral reefs. Smaller font signals supplementary information that's geared to older listeners or independent readers—e.g., the meaning of the scientific name hippocampus; precise terminology such as "plankton," "camouflage," "prehensile tail"; time frames for maturity and mating—but which even the younger audience will want to know, especially on a second reading. Lawrence's intricately textured vinyl and wood prints, highlighted with watercolor wash, coordinate closely with Butterworth's text, occasionally breaking into sequential frames to explicate camouflage color change, a sinuous mating dance, or the variant body positions that allow the sea horse to rise or sink in the water. Given the profusion of life in a sea horse's milieu, viewers will want to invest some time examining its reefmates at a leisurely pace. An index, although not critical in such a short work, is nonetheless a nice touch for directing children straight to their favorite parts, and the endpapers offer profiles of a dozen different sea horses for comparison.