This is the Sea that Feeds Us

Robert F. Baldwin Illustrated by Don Dyen

In simple cumulative verse, beginning with tiny plankton, "floating free," this book explores the oceans' fabulous food chain that reaches all the way to whales and humans in an intricate web.

From the delightful opening verse of this poetic nonfiction book, the reader learns the important concept that plankton is the first link in the ocean food chain. The rhyming text continues and covers each linkthe shrimp who eats the plankton, the sea bass who eats the shrimp and the humans who catch the sea bass for dinner. . .

This book links a fish dinner enjoyed by a thankful family with the entire marine food web. Beginning with tiny plankton, "floating free," followed by a "shrimp as small as a snail (lots of legs and a squiggly tail)," each verse introduces a new link and then connects it to everything else. It reminds us to appreciate the intricate chain of life in the sea that feeds us.

SEA-P Paper $7.95 ISBN 1-883220-70-X

SEA-H Cloth $16.95 ISBN 1-883220-69-6

Ages 4 to 12 32 pages fully illustrated 10½" x 9"

. This is a wonderful resource for studies on ocean plankton, habitats, and food chains. Using the book as a model, students could research their own topic, write poetry to explain it, and include sidebars of facts and figures.

The Reading Teacher - Teacher's Choices for 1999

A lively and very attractive travelogue, in verse, about the life under the sea. Baldwin is a nature writer who's spent a lifetime on the water and who has a nice way with a phrase - "The roaring wind and the booming gale/thrilled the girl with the sandy pail/who caught the shrimp as small as a snail. . ."

The illustrations by nature artist Don Dyen are terrific - full-page, in warm tones with plenty of informational detail. This is a neat book to stuff in the backpack on the way to the shore with the kids

Newark Star-Ledger

"These are the plankton, floating free, zillions of creatures alive in the sea, making their food from the light of the sun that shines on the sea that feeds us." Using this cumulative rhyming pattern,This is the Sea that Feeds Us helps children in Grades 2 to 6 to understand the basics of the ocean's food web. Interspersed between these colourful pages and delightful rhymes are factual statements about the marine food chain, adding another dimension to this book, which would be an asset not only for science but in language arts as well.

Green Teacher