Commotion in the Ocean (Orchard Picturebooks) - Giles Andreae

We've had this book for over 4 years now (I bought it for my eldest daughter when she was only a few months old). The bright colours and rhyming text appealed to me so I thought they would appeal to her...and of course they did. It has definitely been one of her favourites in her collection since that time, although perhaps it is now a little young for her and she prefers a story rather than a book of short rhymes.

Purple Ronnie - really?

Commotion in the Ocean is written by Giles Andreae (also known as Purple Ronnie) and illustrated by David Wojtowycz who have paired up and produced 3 other books together (3 that I know of anyway). The version I have is A4 size and in paperback.

Time To Rhyme

This book is basically a collection of rhymes about the various creatures that live beneath the sea. The first page is like an introduction and the text on here is slighter longer than in the rest of the book because it includes all the creatures mentioned throughout the book and kind of prepares you for what lies ahead. The illustration on this page is a view through a porthole into the sea and you can see various underwater creatures hiding behind seaweed or in shipwrecks or treasure chests.

The animals that are mentioned in the book include the crab, turtles, dolphins, angel fish, jellyfish, shark, swordfish, octopus, stingray, lobster, deep sea fishes, blue whale, barnacles, walruses, penguins, and finally polar bears.

The final page is much like the first one in that it has a longer rhyme concluding the book, with a view through a porthole with all the creatures waving at you!

The rhyme for each creature is usually 4 or 5 sentences long so they are all quite brief, but to the point and are worded in a way which is easy to read and appealing to a young child. For example:

Shark:

'I swim with a grin up to greet you
See how my jaws open wide
Why don't you come a bit closer?
Please, take a good look inside...'

All the rhymes are similar to this in that they describe a characteristic of each animal, for example the crab, he mentions them walking sideways, or the jellyfish who loves to jiggle. It's all very simple and enjoyable to read and most pages have a bit of humour to them such as the octopus who loves to tickle all her children or the lobsters who may snip your fingers in two!

My favourite page is the one which has the Blue Whale and the Barnacles who are living on the Blue Whale's belly! It's very clever and it also shows young children the difference in size of these two very different creatures.

When my daughter was a baby she wasn't interested in listening to me reading the book but we used to point out the animals on the pages and she used to enjoy looking at the pictures. But by the time she was about 2 and a half she really liked me to read it to her and and would listen intently, she sometimes even joined in if she remembered the words. The fact that the rhymes are so simple really helps and I think it helps children to enjoy reading books if the text is appealing like this.

Illustrations

The illustrations in this book are marvellous; each page is covered from edge to edge in beautiful brightly coloured pictures. The animals are given a cartoon like feel to them but they are still recognisable as what they are meant to be, a lot of them are given cheeky facial expression as well which I think is great. The backgrounds are usually full of detail, with little fishes swimming, aquatic plant life etc. The pictures really leap out at you and I can see why this book is adored by many.

Something Extra

I don't know if anyone who already owns this book has realised this but there are 3 starfish on each page (apart from front and back porthole pages) usually hiding somewhere or placed somewhere where you wouldn't usually find a starfish (such as riding on the back of a dolphin or hiding in some bushes). On a couple of pages the starfishes are so small that they are difficult to spot but they are definitely there.

Now I don't know whether this was deliberate from the illustrator or just luck, but it really made looking at this book with my daughter all the more enjoyable. One of her first words was 'star' so when I started showing her the starfish it then used to be a thing that every time we looked at the book that she would find the 3 starfishes on each page, and she used to really enjoy looking for them. After a while she didn't need prompting by me, she would just point them out of her own accord as we went through the book.

Now that she is 4 she does not often like to read this book anymore, but my other daughter who is now 2 and a half, and who has perhaps not as good an attention span as her elder sister, is starting to take an interest in the book.

Finally

I really like this book and so do my daughters, I can recommend it to anyone with young children as it spans across a broad age range (I think it does anyway).

Just buy it and give your kids a treat.

It is likely to be available in most good book shops, currently on Amazon for £3.79 (March 2011)

24 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1408308455