The Secret Oceans - Hardcover

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.

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.