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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Item Barcode | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book | Searching... Boxford Town Library | EJ AND | 32115001509361 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Chelmsford Public Library | JJ/ANDERSON | 31480009207959 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Essex - T.O.H.P. Burnham Free Library | E ANDERSON | 32119000212274 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Hamilton-Wenham Public Library | JJ AND | 30470002023157 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Ipswich Public Library | JE AND | 32122001687502 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Lowell - Pollard Memorial Library | J-E | 31481003982811 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library | JJ AND | 32124001096213 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Methuen - Nevins Memorial Library | J-ER AND | 31548002015023 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Middleton - Flint Public Library | JJ AND | 32126000800776 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... Rockport Public Library | J PS ANDERSON | 32129001468486 | Searching... Unknown |
| Book | Searching... West Newbury - G.A.R. Memorial Library | JJ AND | 32135000845020 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
An award-winning author and illustrator present a tribute to the beauty and mystery of the ocean.
It came from the sea, from the lonely sea,
It came from the glittering sea.
In a small Massachusetts fishing village in August of 1817, dozens of citizens claimed to have seen an enormous sea serpent swimming off the coast. Terrified at first, the people of Gloucester eventually became quite accustomed to their new neighbor. Adventure seekers came from miles around to study the serpent and aggressively hunt it down, but the creature eluded capture. The Gloucester sea serpent was then, and remains now, a complete mystery.
Reviving the rhythms and tone of a traditional sea chanty, M.T. Anderson recounts this exhilarating sea adventure through the eyes of a little boy who secretly hopes for the serpent's survival. The author's captivating verse is paired with Bagram Ibatoulline's luminous paintings, created in the spirit of nineteenth-century New England maritime artists.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-5-Rhyming text recounts the early-19th-century sighting of a large, mysterious sea serpent off the coast of Gloucester, MA. In keeping with the historical record, Anderson tells how the whole fishing village repeatedly viewed the creature until it disappeared with the onset of winter; the following summer, thinking they had sighted it far out on the sea, men set out to kill it, only to discover in the end that they had caught a huge mackerel. The narrator would seem to be a boy who runs through the streets announcing the arrival of the strange visitor. Ultimately, readers learn that an old man is recounting this boyhood ex perience for his grandchild. Formal, highly detailed paintings done in acrylic gouache are somber in tone and fill single or double pages. The shiny serpent is more a curiosity than a monstrous threat. Both verse and pictures create a vivid sense of long ago and far away. Yet, the story is a bit flat and somewhat confusing after the dead mackerel scene when the boy and some fishermen row out and view two creatures at play. Was this a dream or a bit of fantasy? All other references, including the author's concluding note on the history of this and other New England sea-serpent sightings, speak of just a single creature. The poetry reads well, and the story is a somewhat nostalgic recollection rather than a dramatic encounter. An evocative introduction to poetic narrative, local legends, or an exploration of a tantalizing subject.-Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Anderson (Handel, Who Knew What He Liked) casts as a kind of sea chantey this reportedly true tale of a 19th-century sea serpent, spied by the people of Gloucester, Mass. "It was on a day when the sun was bright/ When the limpets were thick on the rocks," begins an unnamed boy's first-person narrative. The child spies the monster while hanging out the wash. Glass-green waves reveal a gargantuan, sinewy sea snake. "My mother drew breath and looked paler than death./ I dropped all my socks in a heap." The villagers quail, but the boy reassures them: " `Is it back in the deep?' `Is it eating our sheep?'/ `I think,' I said, `that the serpent is playing.' " The serpent, which cavorts offshore for weeks, becomes a tourist attraction. But the next summer's encore performance draws a lynch mob: "They came with their peg legs and knives/ They vowed they would drown or would stab or would stifle/ The beast, if it cost them their lives." The boy follows nervously, silently rooting for the sea serpent, and cheers the curious turn of events. Verses full of chuckles and gasps alternate with occasional stumbles (e.g., "sulked" rhymed with "caulked"). Ibatoulline's (The Animal Hedge) period gouaches, by contrast, sail straight and true; white spray, billowing waves, muted winter light all seem to shimmer with depth and feeling. Ages 6-10. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
In a new ballad based on an old Cape Ann legend, the townspeople of early nineteenth-century Gloucester are terrified at the sighting of a monstrous beast offshore. The ballad has an appropriately sea-rocked rhythm and there are some fresh images, but its length does not sustain what is barely an anecdote. Acrylic gouache illustrations are in period style, rather dim but atmospheric. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
To commemorate well-documented old sightings of huge sea serpents gamboling off the New England coast, Ibatoulline paints richly detailed scenes of wide seas and narrow shores, of small boats, monstrous writhing coils and astonished onlookers--to which Anderson pairs an old man's reminiscence in verse: "The serpent was twirling, just chasing its tail, / And showed all intention of staying. / 'Is it back in the deep?' 'Is it eating our sheep?' / 'I think,' I said, 'that the serpent is playing.' " Young monster lovers will share the wonder of this never-solved mystery, and applaud when a company of sea-hunter's strenuous efforts to kill the monster yield only a large mackerel. A 19th-century tale presented in grand, 19th-century style. (afterword) (Picture book. 7-9) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 2-4. The versatile author of works as varied as Handel, Who Knew What He Liked 0 (2001), Feed 0 (2002), and Whales on Stilts0 (2005) pens a ballad that many will assume came straight from some leather-bound volume of romantic poetry. Inspired by the reported appearances of a sea serpent frolicking in Gloucester harbor in 1817, Anderson writes from the perspective of a boy who witnesses the creature's visitations and is secretly pleased when it evades glory-seeking hunters. Ibatoulline, whose classically inspired artwork has graced Hana in the Time of the Tulips 0 (2004) and others, provides refined gouache paintings that would look at home framed in gilt in a maritime museum. The period sensibility extends to endpapers resembling the decorative, blue-and-white ceramic tiles popular at the time. Many children won't respond to the contained illustration style and distant perspectives, which downplay the story's fantasy elements. But if read aloud with feeling, the poem's forceful rhythms will keep the attention of most audiences, as will the endnote about the legend, which includes additional resources, all written for adults. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2005 Booklist