a fun introduction to different animals that live around marsh areas and streams. Beautiful illustrations and descriptions of those different animals.
1 book

The Sea, the Storm, and the Mangrove Tangle by Lynne Cherry is the story of how a storm helps to create a new mangrove island. As the tree grows so does the island. Animals and plants come to it, providing food, shelter, and shade.

The thing that interested me most about the book was how mangroves can take root in salt water. I realized they could take tidal water where a river was emptying into the sea but I didn't realize they could take full on ocean salinity.

The book brought back memories of canoeing through a mangrove forest along the Hawkesbury river, north of Sydney, New South Wales. The mangroves darkened the entire sky. The landscape was a tangle of roots, branches, vines. It was easy to let one's imagination run wild, picturing all sorts of creatures and dangers lurking on the just visible shoreline. (In actuality, it was an abandoned citrus orchard)

I read the book while working a temporary inventory job at the Region 9 library of the EPA. The library contains a mixture of environmental related materials from reports, maps, studies, history, and picture books. ( )

This is a hard book to classify genre wise. It has a bunch of informational elements, but has a fictionalized story to drive the information forward. The main theme of the book is to portray the significance of mangrove communities.

I enjoyed this book. I had spent a summer studying abroad in Bermuda and another in coastal Ecuador and the Galapagos. Both of these programs immersed me in mangrove communities, so it was nice to "revisit" my memories of the trips. For informational text, like I mention, Cherry draws in a fictional story line as well. This helps make the story read easier, and is a good way to present the information. I find her text informative without being dry. For example she writes "by its fiftieth year, its vast network of roots anchored the mangrove tree, allowing it to survive storms. It was now quite a distinctive tree." I find this to be informative text and she does include casts of different characters, like pelicans whom jostle the propagule free. She also have waterman whom decide against chopping down a mangrove to build a shrimp farm. This allows for a variety of points of view, also portraying how many organisms rely on the tree and the environment it provides.

I also am a big fan of her illustrations. They are well detailed and intricate. For example,I like the end pages. She includes the world map highlighting the locations of mangroves. She also has boarders around the map depicting and identifying much of the animal (and some plant) life found in mangroves. Another example would be the illustration of the pelicans on the mangrove tree. The birds and leaves include significant variations of simple green and brown colors. Her attention to detail really allows me as a reader to feel immersed in the tree's environment. ( )

I enjoyed learning about mangroves, and the circle of interdependence that includes the mangroves, the birds that land on them, and the ocean life below the water's surface that lives among the mangrove roots. Colorful pictures add a lot to this book's message. ( )

Great book for learning about cycles in nature, habitats, and how mangroves grow. ( )