Sea Without a Shore
Life in the Sargasso
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A single piece of seaweed buoys a fascinating ecosystem in this nonfiction picture book from award-winning creators Barb Rosenstock and Katherine Roy.
From bryozoans and snails to shrimps, eels, swordfish, and whales, the Sargasso Sea provides a home to countless types of marine life, thanks to the prevalence of macroalgae called sargassum. Following a single blade of this extraordinary seaweed as it grows and spreads, readers see what it provides for the sea’s organisms: a base for hydroids and tube worms to filter and feed, shelter for anemones and nudibranchs and their nutritious waste, hunting grounds for crabs and amphipods, and a source of nourishment and protection for the fish, birds, whales, and reptiles that feed on these smaller creatures.
Through a widening scope on this intricate interdependence, Barb Rosenstock celebrates one of our planet’s most diverse and important ecosystems and the unassuming seaweed that sustains it. Gorgeously illustrated with Katherine Roy’s rich, eye-catching artwork, Sea Without a Shore is as fluid and rhythmic as the currents that shape this tidal home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Five major currents in the Atlantic Ocean "swirl billions of gallons of water clockwise around and around," creating an immense body of water, called the Sargasso Sea after the floating sargassum forests within it. Though it's known as seaweed, Rosenstock (Mornings with Monet) explains in clear, punchy prose that sargassum is an algae that reproduces when small pieces break off and then photosynthesize, growing stipes and blades as "gas-filled globes keep the weed on the surface." In carefully drafted naturalistic watercolors, Roy (The Fire of Stars) paints the sargassum floating in the blue sea as sunlight streams down, then focuses on the tiny creatures that settle upon it, in turn supporting more sophisticated life-forms: "Pinching Crabs,/ Skittering Shrimp." These beings tidy the weed, which keeps "floating,/ around and around," a phrase whose repetition reinforces the sea's sense of movement. As the title indicates, seas don't need seashores to be distinct, nor do thriving ecosystems require land. Around a series of ever larger creatures depicted—fish, turtles, and whales, all sustained by sargassum-supported life—are images of people of various skin tones interacting with the algae. Ample back matter concludes. Ages 4–8.
