Hello Ocean/Hola mar
Pam Muñoz Ryan, author
Pam Muñoz Ryan is an award-winning author and has written many picture books for young children and novels for young adults. Her books include The Flag We Love, Hello Ocean, and Our California. She often visits schools and conferences to speak about writing and literacy. Pam lives in Leucadia, California.
Read more about Pam.
Mark Astrella, illustrator
Mark Astrella is a self-taught artist who has drawn and painted most of his life. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Mary always knew he would be an artist. He learned most of his technique by looking at art in his hometown art museum and by studying books, comic books, and science fiction magazines. Mark collaborated with Jerry Pallotta on The Butterfly Alphabet Book and The Desert Alphabet Book. He lives in Hawaii
Read more about Mark.
School Library Journal
Munoz Ryan creates a rhyming text in both Spanish and English that captures the awe of a young girl discovering the ocean. The photographic realism of the illustrations provides a feast for the eyes, while at the same time the story’s protagonist is using each of her senses to take in her experience.
Colorín Colorado
A child narrates her visit to the ocean, inviting readers to explore it with her. She experiences the sea with all of her senses through realistic illustrations and lyrical language in this gently rhyming tale.
Oneota Reading Journal
In Hello Ocean a young girl playing at the beach describes the ocean through all five senses in a rhyming format. This is a fun book for children of early elementary age to learn about their five senses and new descriptive words. Children will enjoy the colorful pictures of the beach and ocean. The bilingual text preserves the same rhythm and rhyme in both languages, making it a nice read-aloud in Spanish and English. (SP)
El texto de rima Hola Mar presenta a una niña que está jugando en la playa y que describe el mar usando los cinco sentidos. Es un libro divertido para los niños que tienen entre 6-9 años para aprender sobre sus cinco sentidos y las nuevas palabras descriptivas. Los niños disfrutarán de las ilustraciones de colores muy vivos del mar. El texto bilingüe preserva el ritmo y rima en los dos idiomas, y es un buen libro para leer en voz alta.
Booklist, starred review
This picture book, a splendid celebration of the ocean, is a stunning combination of scientific fact, poetry, and artistic talent. Photographic clarity, brilliant colors, and detail born of familiarity with the ocean characterize Astrella's acrylic paintings, which build on the rhythms and energy of Ryan's expressive rhymes. A young girl relates her experiences at the beach to her five senses. Through her perspective, the briny milieu will become real--even to children who have never paid a visit to the sea: "I see the ocean, gray, green blue, a chameleon always changing hue. . . . I hear the ocean, a lion's roar, crashing rumors toward the shore. . . . I touch the ocean and the surf gives chase, then wraps me in a wet embrace. . . . Sandy grains in a salty drink are best for fish and whales, I think." The girl's stay at the beach comes to an end on the book's final page. Other little ones are more fortunate. They can flip back to the beginning of the book and experience the beauty and mystery of the ocean all over again.
Kirkus Reviews
An eloquent tribute to the wonders of the sea, also functioning on a more pragmatic level as an introduction to the five senses. Ryan (Esperanza Rising, 2000, etc.) celebrates the many marvels of the ocean as experienced through a child's sense of taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing. Several stanzas of verse, spread out over multiple pages, are dedicated to each sense, each scene focusing on familiar seashore activities of young children: dodging among the waves, constructing sandcastles, savoring the warmth of the sun. The gentle rhymes are at once descriptive and instructive, offering an almost tangible awareness of the ocean as well as an understanding of each particular sense. Each appears in boldface as an added reminder for readers."I smell the ocean, / the fresh salt wind, wafting lotions / from suntanned skin." Astrella's (The Butterfly Alphabet Book, not reviewed, etc.) acrylic paintings are spectacular. Full-color, full-bleed illustrations form a vibrant setting for Ryan's verse, deftly capturing the vivid hues of the seas, with the dark indigos of deep waters and sheer turquoises of shallower depths. Beautifully written and illustrated, this striking picture book is the next best thing to being there.
School Library Journal
In rhyming couplets, a girl describes the sights, sounds, smell, feel, and taste of saltwater waves breaking on the shore. Evocative paintings, with realistic figures that seem to be superimposed on strong, bright-colored acrylics, reflect the beach setting. Unfortunately, there is no consistency in the depiction of the child narrator; facial features, hair, and even skin tone change dramatically from one spread to another.
Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-57091-372-3
E-book PDF
ISBN: 978-1-60734-257-1
Ages: 3-6
Page count: 32
11 x 8 1/2