ALA Booklist (Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

The DK Eyewitness series exemplifies what the publisher does best: taking a broad topic and slicing it into two-page chapters that, while they contain no narrative thread, make for excellent museum-type browsing. Each spread is a hodgepodge of photographs of specimens, artifacts, ancient and modern art, diagrams, models, and portraits, paired with a digestible morsel of text tying each piece of hard history (or pop-culture tie-in) to the overarching theme. Reading Ocean is like strolling through a great aquarium. Browsers will learn about all strata of the ocean, from seabed to coral reefs to rocks jutting above the surface; various types of animals, from tiny deep-sea dwellers to massive hunters; and the human contingent bs, divers, and finding the Titanic, among other topics. The photos are stunning and wonderfully arranged. Each book rounds out the guided tour with an FAQ of sorts, profiles, and plenty of places for interested readers to keep looking. Just the thing to whet appetites before trucking down to the local real-life museum.

Horn Book

Splendid color photographs of ocean life and the human technology, such as submarines and diving equipment, used to explore the underwater world highlight another eminently browsable volume in this series. The brief text supplies scattered information. Ind.

School Library Journal

Gr 4-6-Two-page entries illustrated with bright, full-color photographs introduce the world's oceans. Although the illustrations are sharp and clear, the text sometimes lacks depth, focus, and clarity as the author attempts to include something about almost everything connected to the subject. For example, in the Waves and Weather'' section, an El Nino and onshore and offshore breezes are not adequately explained. There are also serious omissions. Jacques Cousteau is never mentioned inDiverse Divers,'' nor is Sylvia Earle included in the section on deep dives. Auguste Picard, significant contributor to the design of the deep-diving bathyscaphe, is omitted from ``Ocean Explorers.'' So many visual images compete for attention on every page that the impact of the dramatic representations is lost. Browsing through these fully packed pages and dipping here and there into the text can be fun, but for entertainment, Joanna Cole's The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor (Scholastic, 1992) presents basic facts in an entertaining narrative. Other fine introductions include Martyn Bramwell's The Oceans (Watts, 1994) and Seymour Simon's Oceans (Morrow, 1990).-Frances E. Millhouser, Chantilly Regional Library, VA