Turtle Tide - Hardcover

Swinburne, Stephen R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590780817 ISBN 13: 9781590780817

Publisher: Boyds Mills Press, 2005

Synopsis

A mother turtle swims to shore. She digs a hole in a dune, where she lays one hundred eggs. Following her instinct, she covers the eggs with sand and slowly makes her way back to sea. What happens next, from eggs to hatchlings, is one of the most extraordinary occurrences in nature. The eggs provide food for other animals, and the eggs that survive produce hatchlings that, again, provide food for birds and crabs. Even those hatchlings that make it to the ocean face an uncertain future. Together, lyrical text and dramatic paintings give young readers an understanding of how turtles give birth and how the young fight for survival in this winner of the Maryland Blue Crab Young Readers' Award.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen R. Swinburne is a writer, photographer, and naturalist. He is the author of numerous nature books for children. He and his wife, Heather, and their two children live in South Londonderry, Vermont.

Bruce Hiscock trained as a chemist but later turned to children's nature books as his full-time career. He has written and illustrated many books for children. He lives at the edge of the Adirondack Mountains in Porter Corners, New York.

Reviews

Grade 3-5–Simple, lyrical prose accompanies brilliant watercolors in this account of a nesting loggerhead turtle and her hatchlings. Swinburne describes the decimation of the eggs and the new hatchlings by raccoons, ghost crabs, a heron, a shark, and some gulls, until only one turtle is left to carry on to adulthood. Hiscock's sand- and sea-toned illustrations are eye-catching and match the text well. Two appended pages give more information on marine turtles and the dangers they face, and why we know so little about their far-ranging lives. Gail Gibbons's Sea Turtles (Holiday House, 1995) is a more general introduction, and Bianca Davies's handsome One Tiny Turtle (Candlewick, 2001) offers a glimpse at the possible maturing life of one of the ones that got away.–Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY

Gr. 2-4, younger for reading aloud. A mother loggerhead crawls onto an Atlantic beach, lays a hundred eggs in a deep nest, and heaves her way back to the sea. Then the feast begins: raccoons, ghost crabs, sea birds, and fishy predators quickly reduce the clutch to a solitary hatchling. Swinburne points out in closing remarks that this level of depredation is normal, but human activities have so added to the sea turtle mortality rate that now all five main varieties are endangered. Rather than underscore the carnage, Hiscock focuses on the turtle mother's expressive face, the energy of her offspring, and the bright patterns of fur or feathers on the various predators. He closes with a view of the lone survivor, intrepidly paddling off into the wide, sunrise-lit sea. Children will come away appreciating the long odds that that little turtle has beaten; for accounts of the sea turtle's entire life cycle, back matter offers suggestions on several reading levels. John Peters
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1590780817
• ISBN 13: 9781590780817
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Hiscock Bruce
• Number of pages: 32