Title:
Grayson
Author:
Lynne Cox
Page Count:
148
My Rating: 3.5 TURTLES: A very enjoyable read, I recommend you check it
out.
Description:
It was the dark of early morning;
Lynne was in 55-degree water as smooth as black ice, two hundred yards
offshore, outside the wave break. She was swimming her last half-mile back to
the pier before heading home for breakfast when she became aware that something
was swimming with her. The ocean was charged with energy as if a squall was
moving in; thousands of baby anchovy darted through the water like lit
sparklers, trying to evade something larger. Whatever it was, it felt large
enough to be a white shark coursing beneath her body.
It wasn’t a shark. It became clear
that it was a baby gray whale—following alongside Lynne for a mile or so. Lynne
had been swimming for more than an hour; she needed to get out of the water to
rest, but she realized that if she did, the young calf would follow her onto
shore and die from collapsed lungs.
The baby whale was migrating on a
three-month trek to its feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, an
eight-thousand-mile journey. It would have to be carried on its mother’s back
for much of that distance, and was dependent on its mother’s milk for food. If
Lynne didn’t find the mother whale, the baby would suffer from dehydration and
starve to death.
Something so enormous—the mother whale was fifty feet
long—suddenly seemed very small in the vast Pacific Ocean. How could Lynne
possibly find her? (242)
Review:
Grayson is different from the type of books I normally
read. It is non-fiction, - and even though it’s labeled under science, and
marine life, it reads very much like a long personal essay - which is not
usually the genre I read, but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless.
Lynne Cox tells the story of her discovery of a baby
gray whale when she is about seventeen. She switches between the narratives of
that particular morning, along with spinning off on other stories of her life.
She has a very descriptive writing style, and I loved the visuals she created
of the ocean and the marine life in it.
Most of the time, Grayson read like a creative piece,
but there were times when the writing became very technical. For instance,
instead of just saying the whale is a baby gray whale, she goes on to say he is
about eighteen feet long, and then describes the average lengths of adult male
and female gray whales as well. I felt like I had learned a thing or two when I
was done with the book, but it was a little choppy when I was reading it.
Grayson is
a very quick, cute, enjoyable read. Even though it is not labeled as a book for
children, an elementary school aged child would not have a problem with the
subject matter if they read it or it was read to them. I would recommend this
book to anyone looking for a short, sweet story, especially if they have an
interest in marine life.
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