A First Book of the Sea by Nicola Davies

Nicola Davies teams up with illustrator Emily Sutton for this ocean book, moving from sandy beaches all the way out to the deep sea across 105 pages that mix poems with straightforward ocean facts. Built for ages 3 to 7, it covers the sea's different moods and creatures, from dolphins near the surface to the bioluminescent animals of the deep, using rhythmic, poem-like language rather than a dry list of facts, so a young child gets pulled along by the sound of the words as much as the pictures.

Davies leans on the fact that people already love the ocean, sandcastles, stargazing navigation, watching strange sea creatures, and builds the book's facts on top of that existing pull rather than starting from zero with a lecture on marine biology. The artwork carries enough detail that a repeat reading turns up something a first pass missed, which matters for a book meant to be reread rather than read once and shelved. Ocean-obsessed preschoolers are the target here, but the book earns a second life in any family's nature-read-aloud rotation, one that usually skews toward animals on land.