This brightly illustrated, large-format book offers a collection of poems in the voices of tide-pool animals, including the barnacle, sea urchin, sculpin, mussel, starfish, hermit crab, anemone, and lobster. Each species is presented through first-person verse and a paragraph of information. For instance, in "Hairy Doris," a sea slug introduces herself in four verses beginning and ending with "Hello, my name is Doris. / I'm a shell-less gastropod,/ but you can call me sea slug,'/ if gastropod sounds odd." On the facing page, a few sentences comment on the animal's appearance, senses, and feeding habits. A colorful large-scale illustration stretches across both pages. Clean, curving pencil lines with digitally added colors portray the animals in child-friendly, cartoon-style pictures. A glossary and a list of recommended resources are appended. Swinburne, whose science writing includes Saving Manatees (2006) and Armadillo Trail (2008), shows his lighter side here, in pleasing and sometimes amusing verse.

Gr 2-4 Poems about sea creatures that inhabit tide pools are accompanied by googly-eyed, often comical, cartoon representations of each one, along with a short note describing a few of its characteristics. Many of the selections are quatrains with rhyming second and fourth lines. Barnacle, sea slug, sculpin, mussel, starfish, lobster, octopus, and moreeach describes its own habits in first-person verse, some with a refrain tagged on: "Scuttle to the left, scuttle to the right./In my new shell, I'll scuttle all night." (The hermit crab). Critters are painted in bright pastel colorsyellow, yellow-green, pale and bright pink, red, and shades of blue. Their distinctive shapes are clear, and characteristic details, such as spines, tentacles, and suction cups, are included. Each spread features a humorous poem, several illustrations, and information about the creature. More fun than purely factual, this collection is an additional choice for poetry sections. Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH