‘I love the jellyfish because it’s blue’

STAFF REPORTER

The book cleverly plays with those fascinating sea creatures that littlies may have heard of, but may not know much about. Then they offer bubbles of more extensive info about some creatures.

The SA Jewish Report took the book to its target market, six-year-olds, to review the book.

Kara Bass, a grade R pupil at Sydenham Pre-Primary School, thought the book was “awesome” and said she had “a lot of fun reading it with my mom and I learnt so much about fish”. She was determined to tell all her friends to read the book and, she says, “I want to read it again”.

Tyler Maron, a King David Sandton grade R pupil, liked the book because he likes fish, but he didn’t like the stone fish because it was poisonous. He definitely wanted to read it again. He said the pictures and stories were “very nice”.

The Minnie Bersohn Nursery School grade R pupils also rated Underwater Zoo highly.

Most of them gave it either a nine or 10 out of 10, for being an entertaining and educational read.

Dylan Zidel only gave it a seven, because she said that she really liked the book because she “liked the jellyfish” and “the dogfish”, but didn’t like the elephant seal, and particularly its “trunk”. She did say, however, that she was going to “remember the dogfish”.

Taye Klein really liked the book, but only gave it a seven because he didn’t like the catfish or the sea horse. He liked the killer whale and the shark “because they kill”. He also really liked the information bubbles about the jellyfish and blue whale.

Benjamin Chertkow, in contrast, didn’t like the killer whale because he doesn’t like “big stuff killing”.

Sophia Stecker thought the illustrations were “drawn beautifully” and her favourite part was about the starfish because “its feet grow back”.

Siara Glasser loves the fact that the male seahorse carries the babies and says she loved the “cute” dogfish.

Jordan Kletz loved the jellyfish because “it is blue” and he was going to tell his friends about the dogfish because he says “it isn’t natural that a dog is a fish”.

Natural or not, the book was a hit with its target market.