It’s a city, Chin tells us, with “a complex web of relationships, and each has its own place in the system.” Very quickly, the girl is floating underwater, exploring and learning about the city of the sea. And the water whooshes into the library, and the girl is swept up on a wave that carries with it octopus, sea turtles, fish and more coral. “There are so many species living in reefs that they are often called the cities of the sea,” writes Chin. You learn coral reefs are the largest structures built by an animal on earth! The Belize barrier reef is over 180 miles long! and at the same time, the illustrations show the girl’s world transforming, with the library slipping away and turning into coral, along with sea plants and fish. Illustration copyright © 2011 by Jason Chin So you learn that though coral reefs may look like plants, they’re actually animals and at the same time, the pictures, which often take up more than half the page, tell the story of a girl who goes to the library and picks up a book about coral reefs. And this hybrid form dishes out just enough facts without overwhelming. The result is something completely engaging. In a sense he is blurring the boundary between fiction and nonfiction. What makes Coral Reefs unique is that along with loads of interesting information, he’s included colorful watercolor illustrations that tell their own story. Jason Chin does something pretty wonderful in his nonfiction book, Coral Reefs: He hasn’t forgotten the wild imagination of a kid. What to expect: Science, Nature, Biology, Marine life, Water

Publisher: Flash Point (October 25, 2011)

By Nina Schuyler, The Children’s Book Review

Coral reefs by jason chin