My Dear Sea

PreS-Gr 3–In his author’s note, Carrilho notes that this book was inspired by his young daughter promising the ocean that she would “be careful, my dear sea.” From there grew a gem of an aquatic tale: the story of one girl’s immersive day at the beach, learning of the beauties and dangers of the ocean. The text holds a gentle rhyme that rises and lulls like the softest wave, but the illustrations steal the show. An immediately eye-catching jumble of crisp details blur into water-soaked dreamscapes. At moments there are crayon scribbles, then pen strokes, then rich ripples of watercolor splotches. Carrilho cleverly uses white space to make the ocean’s wildness even more entrancing, particularly at one point where the protagonist crawls from the water to the shore, sandy tracks slashing the page behind her legs. The book exhorts the girl to “respect the sea,” reminding readers what that can mean: respect its unpredictability, its strength, the unknown dangers beneath the waves; also respect the life it gives to creatures and the gifts it gives to human existence.