ULTIMATE FIELD TRIP #3

In a third travelogue chronicling a middle school field trip, Goodman and Doolittle (Stones, Bones, and Petroglyphs, 1998, etc.) observe students on a week-long visit to Cobscook Bay, Maine. Each short chapter represents a day in the life of a field classroom—from a close examination of tide pools to whale-watching on the open sea. The middle schoolers consider conditions of an environment reputed to have the highest tides in the world, pondering questions such as how a barnacle clings to rock or whether mussels stick together for protection. The students count creatures, measure the slope of the beach, test water; they turn into detectives, scanning tide pools for hermit crabs, dog whelks, purple sponge, and young lobster. They witness “salmon Olympics,” spy cormorants and puffins through binoculars, and pause to study the hard-to-catch rock eel. Their easy banter threads through much of the text, which addresses their questions on, for example, the moon’s gravity as the cause of tides, and the air bladders used by seaweed to float. Anyone who has curiously peered into a tidepool will appreciate this peek at blood star and anemone, arctic tern and harbor seal, along with the kid’s-eye view of the bay. (glossary, further reading) (Nonfiction. 8-12)