OCEANS

A quick dive into the world’s five oceans. Bring a flashlight.

The torch (or any source of light) is for revealing hidden details in the painted marine scenes, each of which is backed on the verso by white images placed on a solid black background so they will shine through when lit from the rear. The focus here is on oceanic wildlife, beginning with a narwhal taking a breather at an Arctic ice hole and darting on to show puffins diving on a silvery shoal of herring, an anglerfish snagging an unwary shrimp in the deep Atlantic, and residents of the Great Barrier Reef, hydrothermal vents, a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, and open waters in general. Along with answers to prompts (“What has made this thick, inky cloud?”), Brown offers additional facts about the locale or the creatures in view in simply phrased sentences at each stop (“When in danger, [an octopus] squirts out ink, then makes a quick getaway while it can’t be seen”), amplified at the end by further brief comments. If the gallery is limited in size and cogent topics like pollution and environmental change go unaddressed, still this may leave younger readers primed for deeper plunges. There are no human figures.

Glimpses of a teeming, colorful world just beneath the surface, enhanced by a bit of cleverly designed hide-and-seek.