This handsomely designed picture book offers beautiful images in both words and pictures, though the whole seems less than the sum of its parts. A little boy who has never seen the ocean asks his mother What is the seashore like? So she affectionately describes an imaginary day they might spend together by the sea. While many of the words are effective in evoking the experience, the length of the text and the monotone of the mother may make preschoolers, the logical audience, lose interest, while older kids might question the premise of a child who has no idea of what the sea is like. Minor's full-page, full-color illustrations depict the sights of the beach with skill and finesse (except for an out-of-proportion sand crab). Though occasionally the art seems detached and even slightly contradictory to the words, Minor illustrates the subject with feeling. For larger picture book collections. (Reviewed July 1992)

A boy's mother describes the shore in what PW termed tactile, vivid and musical images''; watercolorsevoke place with imaginative accuracy and visual grace.'' Ages 3-8. (June)

When a boy asks his mother what the seashore is like, she responds with a poetically descriptive series of impressions of the beach from dawn until dusk. Minor's lovely paintings heighten the serene nature of the book, which reads almost like a guided meditation. A useful and relaxing story for bedtime or any time.

K-Gr 2-- A young boy who lives in the mountains and has never seen the sea, asks his mother to describe it. From there, Zolotow carefully chooses her words to create a poem full of the colors, sounds, and sights of a day at the beach. The verbal description is firmly framed within oceans of white space on the left and matched by the equally well-crafted gouache and watercolor paintings on the right. Minor's softly detailed photoreal renderings use the perspective of a gull to capture the vastness of the sea and sky as well as that of sandpipers running along the shore to denote precision of movement. Zolotow's words are so descriptive that the paintings seem almost redundant. They do work together to reinforce the gentle mood of the quiet story so that readers, like the boy, can close their eyes and be there too. --Judith Gloyer, Milwaukee Public Library

Responding to her son's questions, a mother describes the sea he has never seen—what it's like to run in the surf in the early morning mist, marvel at the ``smooth, pearly pink'' of a shell, observe the sea birds, or feel the sun's warmth and the waves' chill. Minor (Sierra, Heartland, etc.) catches the spirit of the evocative, poetic text in gentle, precise watercolor and gouache paintings, delicately framed to balance the elegant in- line type style. A graceful, handsomely produced tribute to a favorite childhood experience. (Picture book. 3-8)"