Welcome to Whalebone Mansion: Creatures That Lurk at a Whale Fall

Gr 1-3–Just in time for Halloween, this odd mashup imagines that a whale fall, the body of a deceased whale, is a spooky haunted house with ghoulish, slimy, hungry, bone-eating animals. Although sidebars provide accurate information about a whale fall, an ecosystem that nurtures other animals, the main text maintains the spooky heavily fictionalized narration, e.g., it’s largely narrated by two small fish that could never swim to the deep water where a whale fall settles. There are vampire squid, bone-eating zombie worms, and a ghoulish goblin shark mentioned, with sidebars and back matter offering links to other information. As part of a Halloween read-aloud, the book offers the slime, fangs, and ghoulish content children like, but those interested in learning more about whale falls have Melissa Stewart’s Whale Fall: Exploring an Ocean-Floor Ecosystem and Lynn Brunelle’s Life After Whale: The Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale.