Secret Oceans, The - Hardcover

Ballantine, Betty

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553096605 ISBN 13: 9780553096606

Publisher: Bantam, 1994

Synopsis

Betty Ballantine, renowned for her contributions  to publishing for more than four decades, takes  readers on a visual odyssey through the vast and  deep oceans of the world, with the help of 12 leading  artists and a story that will entertain as well as  gently inform. Meet the crew of the Turtle, an  exploratory submarine whose mission is to establish  communication with whales. Almost immediately, they  encounter the cetasapiens, a remarkable thinking,  mammalian species who have an equally important  objective: to establish communication with humans,  and to teach them about the fragility of the ocean  ecosystem they are thoughtlessly destroying. The  cetasapiens have until this time kept their  existence secret from humankind, who have only explored  one and a half percent of the undersea world. But  secrecy is no longer a protection against human  destructiveness --and the cetasapiens intend to do  something about it. The dramatic art creates the  tale, with gorgeous full-color paintings of  burgeoning kelp forests, vibrant coral reefs, and  mysterious arctic waters The cetasapiens serve as the  submarine crew's guides. Just as Dinotopia illuminated  a fantastic world where humans and dinosaurs  co-exist, The Secret Oceans brings  alive a world that exists only beneath the ocean  surface -- and in the imagination.

About this title

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8?This info-novel is a modern-day, ecology-oriented 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for kids. It is 2000, and a deep-sea highest-tech submersible with over-the-edge computers and a mechanical translator capable of coping with nonhuman speech is about to descend. It's crewed by a Russian female captain who is multilingual and who holds multiple degrees and a male Scots/Japanese chief engineer with ditto multis, and includes a scientific team headed by an outspoken male scientist/doctor/author/professor and his two, teenaged, adopted, genius children. They're accompanied by an American male observer/reporter/photographer/medic. This expeditionary unit soon encounters the Cetasapiens: extra-intelligent, culturally and technologically advanced super-dolphins who immediately take the humans under their dexterous split flippers. Together they explore a good portion of the Pacific Ocean and provide readers with a lot of oceanic knowledge (a la Verne). The result is an adventurous cruise woven with pleas from undersea creatures to preserve the planet's life-giving oceans, ending with a hopeful hasta la vista rather than a terminating adios. The bibliography is extensive. Information is included about the 12 artists who cooperated on the illustrative portions of the book. Oversized, colorful, highly visual in content, and imagination stirring.?Patricia Manning, Eastchester Public Library, NY
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Working in the tradition of James Gurney's Dinotopia, Ballantine heads beneath the waves with the crew of the Turtle, who discover an intelligent mammalian species called cetasapiens that teach them how fragile the oceans are.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0553096605
• ISBN 13: 9780553096606
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1