You may be surprised what all can be found in the middle of the deep blue sea. The Deep Blue Sea demonstrates how all the colors of the rainbow can be found in a single day - on a single tiny island! - in the middle of the ocean. The book opens with a two-page view of a vast horizon, a light blue sky atop a cerulean ocean, beautiful in its simplicity; the only details are the ripples in the water and a single puffy cloud in the far off distance. Each turn of the page, however, adds a new detail and color to the scene. Each new detail gets more specific and the view zooms in closer until you see the black spot on an orange butterfly. The view pans back out to show changes in the scene and introduce the full spectrum of colors at once - there is even an actual rainbow! You will see the grain of the tree, the individual feathers of a parrot and the glitter of his eye, ripples in the water, and shade on the water from the cloud. Similarly, the sentences build on one another; "a green tree on a red rock in the middle of the deep blue sea." This building technique creates a steady cadence and repetition to help your little one learn the text faster. The color words in each sentence are bolded and displayed in the color they are describing.
There is even some humor your child may enjoy, such the rain cloud moving over the tiny island and pours rain down in just that one spot, making the single coconut fall and the parrot fly away. To increase the educational value, you can pause when you get to the color words and have your child fill-in-the-blank, as they will know because the word is typed in the color it reads. They may want to pause with questions, such as "Are there really purple parrots," "Are there really fish that can sing" or "Are there islands like that in the ocean?" With its vibrant colors, repetition, and fun pictures this is a great book to read over and over.
I read this to my friend, Talmadge, who really got a kick out of the purple parrot. "It looks real!" he exclaimed the first time we saw it. He also pointed out to me that you can see the outlines of the fish underwater as they swim away from the island at the end. I hadn't even noticed that! After we'd read through it a few times, I asked Talmade what his favorite color was, and he said "orange, like the butterfly, because bugs are cool."
--Audra