In the icy waters of the Pacific, a massive humpback whale unexpectedly finds herself tangled in a net abandoned by fishermen. When a rescue boat and a convoy of divers arrive to help the struggling humpback, a realistic and moving encounter bridges the human and aquatic worlds.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Read for enjoyment and then use to teach--comparing texts on the same topic, as a writing mentor for descriptive writing
By Sunday Cummins
I want to call this book "delightful" because I so enjoyed reading it - even though it's about a potentially tragic situation- a true account of a whale that is caught in fishing nets and would have died if not rescued by trained divers who cut it free. What made the book delightful was its flow and the beautiful language the author employs - "The huge humpback whale dips and dives. Her sleek black sides shimmering, she spyhops, lobtails, flashes her flukes." (While this vocabulary would be difficult for our EL students--requiring a lot of teaching, it would be a nice stretch for our native language speakers with a lot of potential teaching for stretching their own vocabulary.)LOVED the author notes at the end. I'd read the book AND the author notes aloud--to late kinder through 3rd grade.This book could be the launch of a unit of study on human impact on the environment, etc. It could serve as a writing mentor for descriptive writing - maybe recreating an event based on an initial news article. It could be used as one source to compare with other sources on this event. I searched "December 11, 2005 humpback whale caught in nets california" and immediately found some good links including video.Lots of potential here and a book to JUST ENJOY!!!
