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Reviewed by: Taylor Coonelly, Elementary School Librarian Title: Life After Whale
Author: Lynn Brunelle Illustrator: Jason Chin Publisher: Neal Porter
Year: 2024 Good for Grades: 3-5 Genre/Type of Book: Nonfiction
Content Warnings, or things that other School Librarians should be aware of: Death of an animal Recommended for a school library: No Reason(s) for choosing the book: Nominated for the CYBILS award for Elementary/Middle Grade nonfiction
If you were tasked by the publisher with writing a short quote for the back cover of this book, what would it be:
When one life ends, it can sustain the ecosystem and the creatures around it for years to come.
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Review:
The blue whale is the largest animal on Earth, measuring over 85 feet long with a mouth long enough to eat enough krill to fill a school bus. The life cycle of a whale can be told from their ears - every 6 months, a layer of wax coats her ears, sharing both a whale's age and the tales of her life (how many times the whale was pregnant, whether they experienced hardship during a season, and more. The whale in this story, over ninety years old, passes away. But her passing creates a new ecosystem and maintains the lives of other marine creatures. Animals below and above the water surface eat the whale, and as time passes, the whale sinks to lower into the depths of the sea until it reaches a barren zone of microscopic creatures. The first phase once the whale reaches the bottom is called the mobile scavenger phase, where animals eat the whales muscle and fat tissue. Sharks, octopus, crabs, sea scuds and more feast on the whale over several years' time. Then comes the enrichment opportunist phase, where waste from the whale enriches the surrounding sea floor and is eaten by smaller creatures. Lastly is the sulfophilic phase, lasting over a century and creating one of the biggest ecosystems at this depth. Even in death, the whale lives on in sustaining new life and enriching the ocean long outlasting its lifespan.
Time for some honesty: I did not care for this book. The illustrations are well-done and detailed, and the information is a good resource about this cycle. However, I don't see this being appealing or usable for an elementary audience, and more suited for a middle school audience. Even then though, this text only seems to me as an educational resource, and not something that students would want to causally pick up to read. The information is pretty dense, and a little graphic for elementary school, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it at all.
Number of party hats:
For more information about this book, see the Publisher's Website
For activities and resources about this book check out TeachingBooks.net
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