...this summer has washed up a particularly delightful anthology of poems by Nicola Davies, which embrace seaside nostalgia while sounding a gentle warning about our toll on the environment... The languid illustrations by Emily Sutton lend the whole book an enchanting, dream-like quality. If you take only one picture book away this summer, make it this.
This is a visual treat and a book that should have pride of place in any school library, classroom and at home – Sutton’s illustration is phenomenal, and pages such as the ones illustrating the poems “Shoal” or “Star School” are beautiful, inclusive, and appealing to young readers.Davies’ poems are by turns sensitive, full of sensuous natural imagery but also remind children of sea pollution and overfishing.
Like fish and chips, Nicola Davies and Emily Sutton are meant for each other. This gorgeously illustrated book has poems for a seaside holiday featuring the joy of shells, crabs, albatrosses and sandcastles. My favourite is a familiar subject made spectacular by Sutton’s artwork and Davies’s words. “Who will be first to see the sea?/ It will peep between the hills/ Or show a dreamy line beyond the highway. Who will be the first to feel their heart/ Fly up, and cry, ‘There! Oh, there!/ There’s the sea!’ As if the whole ocean/ Had been lost, and found again.” You can almost smell the surf between the pages.
This gorgeously illustrated book has poems for a seaside holiday featuring the joy of shells, crabs, albatrosses and sandcastles. My favourite is a familiar subject made spectacular by Sutton’s artwork and Davies’s words. “Who will be first to see the sea?/ It will peep between the hills/ Or show a dreamy line beyond the highway. Who will be the first to feel their heart/ Fly up, and cry, ‘There! Oh, there!/ There’s the sea!’
The final part of Davies' First Book sequence, this companion volume to the award-winning A First Book of Nature and A First Book of Animals, confirms the trio as some of the finest natural history books of recent years. Working here with Emily Sutton, a unique blend of poetry and non-fiction captures the wonder and majesty of our coast and oceans, stunningly realised in exquisite watercolours. Experience the unforgettable thrill of glimpsing the sea for the first time, the wonder of swimming with dolphins and the magic of phosphorescence...
