Down under the pier

Beach lovers, grab your flip-flops and prepare for an adventure scavenging beneath a pier. The children of this dreamily illustrated story begin their day on top of the pier, where an amusement park offers delights such as cotton candy (shown in giant, face-obscuring swirls), a Ferris wheel, a scream-generating roller coaster, and a dazzling carousel. But when their money runs out, "Is the fun all done? Maybe . . . for some." Not for these four friends, however. They take the stairs down under the pier, where a kaleidoscopic world of mussels, sea stars, and barnacles awaits them. As they discover wondrous beach life ("anemones festoon a forest of pilings"), they play and fill their pockets with treasures until the returning tide signals it's time to leave. This colorful celebration of nature's wonders and children's curiosity showcases the beauty of the outdoors, and its sight words and easy-to-understand language make it ideal for newly independent readers. A closing spread offers information on intertidal zones and some of the animals that call it home.

Four friends revel in the sea riches secluded down under the pier. Racing from Ferris wheel to carousel, Skee-Ball to whack-a-mole, the children exhaust all of the greatest pleasures on offer "up on the pier." But when the rides are done and their money's gone, they go below the pier, where "Fun is free, and the world is ours." Sumpter's cotton-candy--colored illustrations, paint and pastels on brown paper, deftly capture the bright lights of the pier above and then, the deeper, dazzling beauty of the creatures hiding below. Beckerman's lightly repetitive, sometimes rhyming text imbues the narrative with a gentle surge and pull ("They don't know what we know-- / To slip down the stairs when the tide is low"), breaking in small moments of wonder and discovery. The four friends--two of whom appear to be white, a brown-skinned boy with tightly coiled brown hair, and a brown-skinned girl with straight black hair--trawl the pier's underbelly unaccompanied by adults. They are young enough to find wonder in all of its treasures and just old enough to be allowed to wander off alone. The book concludes with a simple, engaging illustrated guide to some of the sea creatures that can be found in the intertidal zone. A dreamy tribute to summer days--and sea life and the spaces in-between. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.