Out of the Ocean

by Debra Frasier, Debra Frasier (Illustrator)

Overview

Open this book and you'll be walking along the ocean shore, looking for all kinds of special things. Some will be small enough to fit in your hand—like shells and sea glass. Others—like the sun and the sky and the waves—will be too big to carry home. But no matter what your journey holds, you'll soon learn that looking for the ocean's treasures can be as important as finding them.
Debra Frasier, author-illustrator of the bestselling On the Day You Were Born, invites you along on this beach journey of discovery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780152163549
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/01/2002
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	1,103,290
Product dimensions:	9.75(w) x 9.75(h) x 0.56(d)
Lexile:	690L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 7 Years

About the Author

Debra Frasier's picture book, On the Day You Were Born, has become a perennial classic for welcoming new babies and celebrating families. Her other books include Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster, A Birthday Cake is No Ordinary Cake, The Incredible Water Show, and Out of the Ocean. 
 

Debra Frasier's picture book, On the Day You Were Born, has become a perennial classic for welcoming new babies and celebrating families. Her other books include Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster, A Birthday Cake is No Ordinary Cake, The Incredible Water Show, and Out of the Ocean. 
 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A warm and exciting book."—American Bookseller
"This book . . . delivers the salt smells and sea sounds that accompany beachcombers right to readers' laps."—Kirkus Reviews
"A satisfying offering that will open doors for its readers."—School Library Journal

Editorial Reviews

"A warm and exciting book."—American Bookseller
"This book . . . delivers the salt smells and sea sounds that accompany beachcombers right to readers' laps."—Kirkus Reviews
"A satisfying offering that will open doors for its readers."—School Library Journal
—

From the Publisher

"My mother says you can ask the ocean to bring you something. If you look, she says, you might find it," begins this picture book tribute to the sea. While the child covets such tangible "treasures" as sea glass, pelican feathers and a note-filled bottle, her mother "keeps asking for things that are too big to carry home. Sun. Water. Silver moonlight. The sound of waves. Sea turtle tracks at dawn." Frasier's ("On the Day You Were Born") narrative sets the mother's rather impressionistic passages against the child's more grounded listing of the many ocean gifts the child collects. Graphically, the book combines full-spread photos of beach findings and sunlit water with Frasier's fanciful collage-like art. The opening double-page illustration invites readers to view the sunny beach scene along with daughter and mother, the sand stretching before them, hibiscus blooming and frothy waves hitting the shore. However, succeeding spreads are interrupted by grainy, distorted photos inset within the collages. Overlaid on top of these photos, framed in heavy black lines, mother and child are silhouetted with no discernible features, which tends to distance the reader. This jarring juxtaposition makes what would otherwise be a kind of spiritual scavenger hunt at the beach a rather jolting experience for the reader. "An Ocean Journal" at volume's end offers aspiring beachcombers information on some of the sea's fruits. FYI: The book is also available in the Out of the Ocean Treasure Bag and Ocean Journal Package (includes book, bag and 8-page journal)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

PreS-Gr 3--"My mother says you can ask the ocean to bring you something." Frasier evokes the limitless possibilities of a summer beach day and personalizes it through the conversations of a mother/daughter pair. A sense of the ocean as gift giver is projected, registering the beachcombers' hopes and satisfying them when the time is right. In this manner, objects washed ashore, from a wooden shoe to bottles with messages, all seem charged with magic. Frasier incorporates full-color snapshots with cut-paper art. Her illustrations stretch over double-page spreads. Close-up photos of sand provide the background. As in On the Day You Were Born (Harcourt, 1991), the layout is inventive and effective, whether cradling the text or propelling readers on to the next page. Boldly framed silhouettes of the narrator and her mother are juxtaposed onto beach scenes, creating a feeling of depth, a window into a more spiritual dimension. The book ends with a six-page "Ocean Journal" that gives background on the featured found objects: sharks' teeth, sea-turtle tracks, black skate egg pouches, beach glass. A satisfying offering that will open doors for its readers.--Liza Bliss, Worcester Public Library, MA

School Library Journal

Relief for the land-locked comes in the form of this book, which delivers the salt smells and sea sounds that accompany beachcombers right to readers' laps. Frasier ("On the Day You Were Born", 1991, not reviewed, etc.) combines full-color seashore photographs and cut-paper shapes in tropical-colored collages. As a mother and daughter walk the beach, the child is fascinated by collecting material things such as shells, beach glass, a wooden shoe, and shark's eggs. The mother takes in bigger things: the sun, sea turtle tracks, and the wash of waves on the beach. When the little girl protests that those things are always there, her mom explains her secret, "the bigger the thing, the easier it is to forget to see it." A photographic afterword explains the significance of the beachcombing finds that are pictured, from a wooden shoe to a glass float. Frasier also chronicles the life cycle of the sea turtle, whose tracks she saw, explains how notes in a bottle get transported by ocean currents, and reveals which finds are rare. The value of this treasure hunter's appreciation is in the notion that real "treasure" is in the looking.

Kirkus Reviews