Water Sings Blue by Kate Coombs (Module 5; Book 2)

Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems by Kate Coombs, Review by Elaine Alexander

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coombs, Kate and Meilo So. Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems. San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC, 2012. ISBN: 9780811872843.

SUMMARY
This Lee Bennet Hopkins award winner takes readers on a trip to the beach, examining sun, sand, and sea life that make up our beautiful ocean ecosystems. From small pieces of driftwood and the screech of seagulls, to the power of the ocean waves, this book of ocean poems will feel like a restorative day at the beach.

ANALYSIS
Any ocean lover will enjoy this collection of nature poems. Appealing for its playful words and evocative imagery, this book also weaves factual information into the poems, such as "Sand's Story" that unfolds the grain of sand's journey from rocks that now "grind and grumble" (Coombs 7); reduced to small sizes by motion of the waves.

The language is both beautiful and imparts a visual representation of typical sea life and shoreline geology. This ode to the ocean is paired with beautiful watercolors that spill across the two page spreads. Poems are paired with striking seagulls in flight against skies of blue; colorful tide pools exposed on the sand; flaming coral under the sea; and a shy, inky octopus, leaving his "autographs" (Coombs 21) in the water. The language evokes descriptive images, helping a child to imagine the mindset of a wave, or the journey etched into a sea turtle's shell.

The arrangement of poems denotes a circular journey, beginning with a launch from shore, flitting from one ocean topic to another, from one creature or object associated with the sea, before finally ending back at the tideline at sunset. While the book does not have a table of contents or index, each poem title is either directly correlating to a sea creature or object you may associate with the ocean. Reading this single poet collection of ocean poems encapsulates a shared beach experience, hints at a poetic melody of the sea, and leaves the reader free to exercise their own imagination of the mystery and beauty of ocean life.


Use & Highlight Poem
I would select the closing poem for my highlight poem. Tideline is an excellent example of how Coombs uses of poetic word choices that evoke universal experiences that children can relate to. I would read this to children and have them try to write a similar poem about a day at the beach where they may have written in the sand or made a sand castle and watched the tide wash it away. This is a great opportunity to tie ocean study to writing and creative expression.

Tideline

Ocean draws on the sand
with trinkets of shell and stone,
the way I write on the sidewalk
with a stick of chalk at home.

She signs her name in letters
long and wavy and clear,
saying "Don't forget me --

I was here,
wasss h e r e
wasssss h e r e . . . "