Annotated Tuesday

Today I bring you an annotation of a popular children's book (something I'll try to do every week). Today's book was read to me by a former professor, Joan Kindig, in another children's literature class.

Sherry, Kevin. I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean. Illus. by Author. United States: Dial, 2007. Print.

Sherry’s tri-layered illustrations are uniquely varied and separated by a pane of glass according to the book’s end page explanation. The bottom layer is watercolor using various shades of blue and green to make up the ocean floor as well as the red innards of a whale. The second layer is cut paper, creating the realistic shapes of the ocean dwelling characters which represent an accurate portrait of ocean life: turtles, puffer fish, octopus, sharks, shrimp, clams, crabs, jellyfish, and whales. The third layer is heavily inked, bringing to life the voice of the narrator squid: from the small, faint words as he whispers when a shark is nearby to large curved words demonstrating the squid’s boisterous personality as well as the illustrator’s playfulness. The mood of the book is very calm and tranquil but offset by the garish, invasive voice and personality of the squid.

Sherry experiments very heavily with proportion throughout the book, portraying the squid in several sizes and spacing him erratically on the page which also adds variety; sometimes taking up a small portion on one page, to focusing solely on his eyes and mouth which take up an entire page and spill over the center onto the following page. This placement not only indicates the squid’s exaggerated, physical size on the page in proportion to the other sea creatures, but also shows the squid’s perception of his superiority over the other creatures based solely on his size. This can reflect a child’s developmental stage where their world is as self-centered as the squid’s as well as how they view themselves among others in the world. The squid’s loud opinion of his worth among his friends makes the book’s mood very funny and the tone very loud. His personality leaps off of the page and is sure to relate to young readers.