Turtle Bay

by Saviour Pirotta

Book Overview

How can Taro and Yuko help to protect the sea turtles? This new edition of a classic, pioneering story about turtle conservation is needed today more than ever. Taro and Yuko help old Jiro San to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374378886
• ISBN13: 9780374378882
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 1 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.7" x 10.9"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

4 1/2* Turtles Emerge!

This is a beautifully illustrated story of "Jiro-San," the supposedly "strange" older man who sweeps the beach, listens to birds, and waits mysteriously for something from the sea. Taro thinks Jiro-San is "old and wise," but his sister Yuko considers him "weird." Jiro-san enlists the boy's help in sweeping the beach, and, for a moment, he wonders whether Taro was right about the "old" man. However, Jiro-San explains that his sea friends won't swim to this beach if they could get hurt on the scattered garbage. Taro and Jiro-San explore the inner bay, and in a series of striking tonal illustrations (one is mostly purples, another blues, and yet rich with another browns and yellows), the two see many wonders: Dolphins, swordfish, and a whale. "'Are they your old friends?' Taro asked." "`They're friends,' said Jiro-San, `but not the old friends I meant. Maybe they will come tomorrow.'" Finally, Yuko joins the man and Taro, and they see an approaching shape: "It was huge and bobbed up and down on the water like an enormous cork. At last, the children could see what it was-a turtle!" The next few pages show the huge turtle laying her eggs; eight weeks later, hundreds hatch from under the sand and crawl towards the beach. Yuko finally agrees with her brother that this is a wise man indeed-"full of wonderful secrets." A one-page afterward ("About Sea Turtles") explains the breeding of young loggerhead turtles, and the need for protecting them. Although I enjoyed the book very much, especially Nilesh Mistry's vivid and imaginative pictures, I felt just a little disappointed at its conclusion. Both the last picture (the turtles scurrying to the sea in an almost abstract pattern) and the text (the realization that Jiro-San is wise, not "crazy") seem slightly anticlimactic, especially after the preceding excitement. Still, the book has excellent and unique pictures, a nicely accomplished intergenerational theme, and exciting depictions of various ocean animals. The story appears to take place in Japan, but the setting is tangential to the story.

Enchanting story, beautiful pictures!

Why is Jiro-San sweeping the beach?My 8 year old son loves turtles and he loves this book. We enjoyed it together as a read-aloud and now he reads it over and over to himself. The pictures are breath-taking with rich colors and really bring the story to life. Mystery and wonder abound as a wise old man becomes friends with a boy and his sister.