Ocean Speaks
Welcome to Perfect Picture Book Friday, Everyone! My picture book recommendation today is…
Ocean Speaks: How Marie Tharp Revealed the Ocean's Biggest Secret by Jess Keating (Author), Katie Hickey (Illustrator), published by Tundra Books, 2020.
Themes/Topics: Marie Tharp, biography, geologist and oceanographic cartographer
Opening: The beach was a blanket of squishy, soft sand, and Marie wanted to feel it under her feet.
Brief Synopsis (from Amazon): From a young age, Marie Tharp loved watching the world. She loved solving problems. And she loved pushing the limits of what girls and women were expected to do and be. In the mid-twentieth century, women were not welcome in the sciences, but Marie was tenacious. She got a job at a laboratory in New York. But then she faced another barrior: women were not allowed on the research ships (they were considered bad luck on boats). So instead, Marie stayed back and dove deep into the data her colleagues recorded. She mapped point after point and slowly revealed a deep rift valley in the ocean floor. At first the scientific community refused to believe her, but her evidence was irrefutable. She proved to the world that her research was correct. The mid-ocean ridge that Marie discovered is the single largest geographic feature on the planet, and she mapped it all from her small, cramped office.
Why I Like This Book: This is a jewel of a book! I loved the way Jess Keating used lyrical prose to share Marie's story. Even though Marie's dream (to explore the ocean) didn't come true as she thought it would she was able to use her skills in the place she was at to add to the world's knowledge. A great book with themes of persistence, patience, discovery, women in science, women's firsts.
A great introduction to Marie Tharp! Recommended for school libraries!
Links To Resources
—Map Skills for Elementary Students from National Geographic
To find even more awesome picture books (and browse them by theme!) visit Susanna Leonard Hill’s Perfect Picture Books page.
Never miss a post—receive blog posts in your inbox.
