Book Review
The Adventures of the Thundering Whales and the Dreaded Weaved Catcher
By Stephen T Vadakin
Did you know that a dolphin was a whale?.
I was slightly taken aback at how much I learned while reading The journeys of the Roaring Whales. I can recollect wishing I had a kid to read the book to. Then I realized what I actually wanted was a film version of the book, with all its characters portrayed in fantastic color, like a “Finding Nemo”, but with much more to claim. Much of the time I find Children’s books that anthropomorphize their animal characters lose their capability to teach. An animal ( or mammal, or fish, or bird, and so on. ) can not take on human features without losing some of their own. But the writer, Stephen Vadakin, has spent sufficient time studying sea life to permit his characters to keep their real life biases and reactions as true as practical. For example, are you aware that sperm whale and squid were enemies? Vadakin not only tells a great story, with danger and excitement and entirely fleshed out characters, he incorporates a vocabulary lesson at the end of each chapter so that everybody concerned knows what plankton, krill, fluke and bioluminescense are. The teachings of closeness, helping and setting aside ones differences for the overall good are all demonstrated in the story. The most important thing that I found clumsy was the utilising of 3rd person, present tense across the story.
It took some time to get accustomed to hearing a children’s story in present tense. I also would have enjoyed a lot more graphics.
I suspect this explains why I would like to see this made into a production. The different characters, while typically in the whale family, are so distinct that only animation could do it justice.