Review: Coral Reefs

6/29/2016

Did you know that it is shark week? Yeah, I know, go figure that eh? On my, resurrected old blog I recently posted about a book called "Shark Week". Fascinating book, and I was thinking about how sharks also live in Coral Reefs, not just in volcanoes, or in the Arctic. So I wanted to tell you about this neat little book called Coral Reefs, written by Jason Chin ...and I think that he is also the illustrator.

I have to admit, when I started reading the book I thought it would be about a girl exploring the coral reef since she is pictured on every gorgeously illustrated page, and I was confused that it wasn't. As I continued to examine the illustrations closely I realized that the girl in the images was holding a copy of the book Coral Reef itself.

Jason Chin has written a fact-filled, carefully illustrated book about the Coral Reef, based on his experiences visiting the barrier reef in Belize.

Check out the detail from the very first page. See how the girl is reaching for the coral reef book? (yes, I know, sometimes I'm slow on these details). :)

The book proceeds telling us how corals grow.

The coral just keeps growing and growing, ever expanding upon itself, providing food and shelter for 1,000's of marine life. Can you imagine that Belize Barrier Reef is over 180 miles long, and the Great Barrier Reef system is over 1,400 mi long.

A whole web of life is connected to the coral reefs.

It's all a giant food chain that can be found in all the parts of the coral reef and the areas surrounding it like lagoon and the ocean beyond.

I appreciated that the author took time to talk about individual animals and how one might be able to hide from this animal by going to this part the reef, but while doing so needs to keep an eye out not to be trapped by another animal. Showing how the grouper is helped by the gobies, and the gobies are helped by the grouper.

As the book progressed we learned how the coral reef is like a city with all the different parts interacting with each other, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in not so good ways, but always somehow interacting.

At the close of the book, we learned about some of the dangers coral reefs are facing and learned some additional facts about coral reefs.

Did you know that the coral reefs in Indonesia are the most diverse? There was lots of good information provided for me in this book, even pictures with sharks in them (YEAH for shark week). But it always amazes the diversity one can find in the coral reefs, from the coral itself which grows in many different ways, to the plants and animals that dwell in and around them.

Coral Reefs was provided to me by Raincoast Books.
It is 40 pages long, about 9 x 12 inches, a softcover picture book aimed at children 5-9 years old, but would serve well as an introduction to coral reefs for any age.

Jason Chin is the author and artist of the award-winning book Redwoods , which Kirkus Reviews called, An inventive eye-opening adventure." His work also includes illustrations for Simon Winchester's The Day the World Exploded . He and his wife Deirdre, also an artist, live in Vermont.

If you are interested in learning about Coral Reefs, do yourself a favour and check out