I Sea Horses is an imaginative
story of a pack of wild horses who decide to take up residence in
the sea. At first, most of the horses are wary of moving to such a
different environment, "A rust colored mare declared in a shrill/
'Oh my goodness some day I might have to grow gills!/ What will happen
to my coat and my mane in the sea?/ I'll be all tangled and weedy,
it's too messy for me!" However, after everyone gives voice to their
fears, they agree to follow their leader, and subsequently, become
colorful sea horses.
While the premise of
the story is cute and makes for a great children's book, the execution
does not live up the unique and fun story line. Told in rhymed couplets,
a difficult and often dangerous format for authors, the rhymes are
often highly contrived and forced. "Could it be that they wished
for a new home to be free?/ Could it be they could see the future
of wild horses to be?"
The illustrations, done by the author's
teenage daughter, are great and lend a fabulous representation of
the characters to the text. It proves that young people can be successful,
and I was happy to see that her artwork was quite good. She uses
great colors and contrast, however, her wonderful illustrations
have been cropped to fit into small circles (bubbles) that only
grace every few pages. There are several spreads with no artwork
at all, other than a bubbly blue and gray background. The bubbly
background was a cute idea, but it doesn't complement the text and
will probably not hold the interest of the small children whom this
text is created for.
Overall, the coolest feature of this
book is the back cover. It contains photos of the plush sea horse
toys that correspond to each sea horse character from the book.
There is also information about real sea horses and how to protect
them.
I feel that this story has
great potential that could be more fully realized by allowing Callan
Van Zant's art work to hold a more prominent position in the book
to make this a true picture book. The story is fantastic and takes
everyone on a fun journey into the imagination. There is also an
underlying message that even though it can be scary to try to new
things, if you have courage, you may just find that new things can
be fun.