Books to Take to the Beach

In my Growing With Science blog I have been doing a series on science you can do at the beach, for example this week’s activity about tide pool animals. In the process I’ve discovered a number of wonderful books about seashore and ocean creatures, plus rediscovered some old favorites.

How to Hide an Octopus and Other Sea Creatures, written and illustrated by Ruth Heller, is a longtime favorite of ours. This is a lively introduction to camouflage in the animal kingdom that teaches about a number of novel sea creatures. This book is where we first learned about pipefish and red sea dragons. I love the rhyming text, because it helps young ones just learning to master language. The bright illustrations are unique and eye-catching, and looking for the animals hiding in each spread is great fun. This is a classic that is well worth revisiting.

What Lives in a Shell? written by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld and illustrated by Helen K. Davie, is the perfect book for younger readers to learn more about the seashells they discover at the beach. They quickly find out that a seashell is someone’s home. What Lives in a Shell? is part of the Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science series, which always seem to be high quality introductory science books.

If you going to the beach or visiting an aquarium close to home, there are a number of exciting nonfiction books out there to heighten and reinforce your experience.

How to Hide an Octopus and Other Sea Creatures by Ruth Heller

Reading level: Ages 4-8
Paperback: 32 pages
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap (April 29, 1992)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0448404788
ISBN-13: 978-0448404783

What Lives in a Shell? (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 1) by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld and Helen K. Davie (Illustrator).

Reading level: Ages 4-8
Paperback: 32 pages
Publisher: Collins; 1 edition (April 22, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0064451240
ISBN-13: 978-0064451246