Fish Faces

More than seventy monstrous, beautiful, friendly, and fierce denizens of the deep, including the cat shark and the parrotfish, swim through the full-color photographs of a collection that also features a clear, rhythmic text.

PreSchool-Grade 3-- A brief alliterative, rhythmic text accompanies a host of brilliant full-color photos. The slight text contains some minor quirks. For instance, "A nose that shines in the dark!" refers to the luminous fleshy proturberance on the snout of a deep-sea anglerfish. Also the fish on the back cover is not a guineafowl puffer as indicated in the notes. More irksome are such nonscientific phrases as "Faces that are friendly" and "Faces that are fierce." Some of the small inset photos lose their definition when placed against multicolored backgrounds, but the others are in clear contrast to the vivid blues and greens of a wavering, watery world. Despite these minor carps, the glowing photos and simple text provide a rare look at some strangely shaped and/or brightly colored ocean dwellers for young readers. A final page names all the fish depicted, page by page, but the pages aren't numbered, and no further information or description is given. --Patricia Manning, Eastchester Public Library, NY
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Breathtaking as Wu's underwater photos of scaly denizens of the deep may be, his picture book is less the catch of the day than the one that got away. Page after page of the book presents arresting portraits of luminous fish--spreads are composed of full-page and inset photos, and the color and composition capture the almost supernatural beauty of hidden ocean life. But the pictures are not supported by the text. Wu's writing is banal at best ("Faces that could be sad or mad") and occasionally ungrammatical ("Fish that glide on fins like wings"). An endnote identifies the pictured fish by cross-referencing them through page numbers--although the spreads are unnumbered; directionals name creatures in insets from "top to bottom" for horizontal layouts. Failure to include such basics as the native regions of each fish will frustrate the curious. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Celebrating the enormous and colorful variety of ocean life, a marine biologist and underwater photographer groups his splendid color photos by characteristics he points out in a concise text with a verse-like cadence: ``Fish that glide on fins like wings...Spotted fish, dotted fish/Fish with lines and stripes and waves...Red eyes/Green eyes/Great big pretend eyes....'' With snapshot-sized insets superimposed on creatively varied vistas featuring additional specimens and the lush blue or green of the sea itself as an out-of-focus background, his compositions are as interesting for their design as for the fascinating comparisons they present. A final page identifies the specimens (a matching challenge, since the pages aren't numbered). Remarkably handsome. (Nonfiction/Picture book. 3-9) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.