Sea Soup: Zooplankton - Hardcover

Cerullo, Mary M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0884482197 ISBN 13: 9780884482192

Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers, 2001

Synopsis

* Notable Books for Children, Smithsonian *
* Outstanding Science Trade Books for Children―Children’s Book Council/NSTA *
* Honor Book, Society of School Librarians International *

How do we learn about animals that are tiny enough to slip through the eye of a needle? Mary Cerullo’s text answers intriguing questions about these tiny ocean creatures, while Bill Curtsinger’s extraordinary photographs serve up tantalizing images of an amazing “sea soup.”

What is the fastest animal in the world? What can dive as deep as a whale or make a submarine disappear in the ocean? The answer is zooplankton! The ocean is teeming with these small, drifting animals that come in all shapes ands sizes, from tiny zippy copepods to large, brilliantly colored jellyfish (that you don't want to bump into).

There are some very strange zooplankton, like the arrow worm -- you can see what it had for lunch inside its stomach! Some zooplankton give off a ghostly underwater glow, and others are poisonous, like the sea wasp, a jellyfish that has killed more swimmers of Queensland in northern Australia than the great white shark.

Some zooplankton are "temporary" zooplankton, drifting along on ocean currents when they are young, but turning into fish or crustaceans when they grow up and swim on their own.  Other zooplankton and zooplankton all their lives -- or until they get eaten! Zooplankton are an important meal in the ocean food web.  A single blue whale may devour up to eight tons of shrimp-like krill a day.  That's a big serving of sea soup!

Bill Curtsinger's extraordinary photography brings us right into the watery world of zooplankton, while Mary Cerullo's lively text answers our questions about these fascinating ocean creatures.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Cerullo decided at thirteen that she ought to become an oceanographer. Although her career has always centered around the ocean, she discovered that she preferred exploring many different topics, which led her to teach and write about the ocean instead. She likes to immerse herself in her topic, so a few years ago Mary went on an underwater dive with ten Caribbean reef sharks. She has written 20 nonfiction books on ocean life for children, including City Fish, Country Fish, Sharks (a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year), Octopus (a Junior Library Guild Selection), Giant Squid (an Outstanding Science Trade Book selection by the NSTA and the CBC), and The Truth About White Sharks (IRA Teacher’s Choice Award). Mary is the associate director of Friends of Casco Bay, an environmental group on the Gulf of Maine.

 

Bill Curtsinger, like many explorers before him, first traveled to Antarctica as a young sailor.  He was in the Navy Combat Camera Group, assigned to photograph the work of National Science Foundation researchers.  In the years since, Bill's photography has appeared in numerous books and magazines, including National Geographic, Life, Time, Newsweek, Outside, Natural History, and Smithsonian. 

From Booklist

Gr. 4-7. Cerullo and Curtsinger, whose Sea Soup: Phytoplankton (1999) presented the tiny plants that drift in the oceans, now explore drifting animals such as krill, jellyfish, and the larval stages of many fish and crustaceans. On each double-page spread there is a single question--"What is the fastest animal in the world?"--accompanied by a greatly magnified photo and the answer--"Shaped like a bullet with antennae, the copepod, a tiny cousin of lobsters and crabs, is for its size the fastest animal of earth." The spread that follows offers several colorful clear photographs as well as a few paragraphs of information about copepods and how they compare with cheetahs (the fastest land animal). Other topics discussed within this question-and-answer format include zooplankton as food, zooplankton migration, and dangerous zooplankton. Intriguing. Carolyn Phelan
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About this edition

• Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0884482197
• ISBN 13: 9780884482192
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 40