A well-traveled manatee guides young readers through an undersea journey in this lively, informational picture book.

Always up for exciting aquatic adventures, wise Kobee Manatee and his friends, Pablo the hermit crab and Tess the seahorse, leave the Cayman Islands for a roughly 500-mile swim to the Belize Barrier Reef. Their destination: the Seagrass Café, run by Kobee’s cousin, who needs help cleaning up plastic litter before she can host her guests. Off the coast of Belize, too, is the must-see Great Blue Hole, which Kobee tells his friends is “one of the most amazing places on Earth”; one of many “Kobee’s Fun Facts”—short, clearly written text boxes sprinkled liberally throughout the book—informs readers that “The Great Blue Hole is so deep that sunlight cannot reach its depths, and plants and plankton can’t survive.” Some other facts aren’t exactly “fun,” in that they observe the alarming issue of damage to ocean life due to climate change and massive dumping of plastics and other toxic waste. However, they do reflect careful research and also offer information for kids and families, such as a list of ocean-conservation organizations. These encapsulated asides give weight to the charm of Thayer’s storytelling and the colorful, cartoon-style characters courtesy of illustrator Gallegos; Kobee sports a purple cap and yellow vest, Tess has glamorous pink hair, and the depiction of life in the ocean effectively draws on both fact and fantasy. Fueled by themes of friendship, cooperation, and compassion, the trio’s eventful journey also doesn’t lack for excitement, either: Pablo uses his claws to free a sea turtle from bindings of plastic, the friends are nearly stung by a Portuguese man-of-war, and Kobee rescues Tess from a scorpionfish.

A well-crafted, thoughtful, and well-illustrated addition to a noteworthy educational book series.

A manatee, a hermit crab and a sea horse make an unlikely but enjoyable trio as they share facts, fun and friendship down the Eastern Seaboard.

Thayer’s debut children’s book introduces readers to Kobee—a manatee in a purple newsboy cap and yellow shirt—as he swims from Massachusetts’ Cape Cod Bay to his Florida home of Blue Spring State Park. This affable marine mammal is not alone on his adventure. Tess, a sea horse, and then a South Carolina hermit crab named Pablo join him for his dip in the Atlantic Ocean and his search for warmer waters. Through their interactions, the reader learns more about manatees. Kobee, the tale’s narrator, proves an invaluable traveling companion: He provides cover, protects his friends from close calls with both a shark and a giant sea turtle, helps Pablo locate a new shell and leads the group on their journey to his manatee habitat. Kobee has his own dangerous encounter as he, Tess and Pablo narrowly escape a collision with a boat. He warns that it’s sometimes difficult for boats to sight him. He cautions, “One of my manatee friends was badly hurt by a boat propeller.” Not to worry, though: Kobee is appropriately careful and circumvents catastrophe throughout his exploits. Thayer’s charismatic characters are further animated through Gallegos’ vibrant, color-saturated illustrations, bringing the story to life. Readers, however, are pulled away from the illustrations and the narrative at times by “Kobee’s Fun Facts,” superimposed boxes that provide facts and information about manatees. This clunky stylistic choice, however, does not undermine the information they present. When Tess remarks about Kobee’s large size, the boxed information states, “The average manatee is 10 feet long and weighs between 800 to 1,200 pounds!” Between Kobee’s narration and Thayer’s trivia, this is an entertaining tool that one can easily imagine supplementing lessons in marine conservation or biology.

A swimmingly fun, educational trip sure to be enjoyed by young friends of the manatee.

A manatee and his friends swim across the Gulf Stream and brave a hurricane on their way to the Bahamas in this colorful adventure for young readers.

In his second engaging children’s picture book, Thayer (Kobee Manatee: Heading Home to Florida, 2013) expertly weaves in true-life weather facts with a simple but eventful tale. A resourceful manatee named Kobee sets out on a 300-mile swim from Key West, Florida, to Nassau with his friends, a hermit crab named Pablo and a purple, pink-maned sea horse called Tess. There, Kobee plans to surprise his sister, Kim, on her birthday. But before the travelers reach the festive celebration, amid the multicolored coral reefs of the Bahamas’ warm waters, they face some suspenseful challenges. First, there’s a scary waterspout and a thunderstorm at sea: “Two lightning bolts shot right past us. The sky rumbled and roared.” A spinning hurricane follows: “The east winds swirled….I went for air just as a GIANT wave spun us around like a washing machine.” Throughout the adventure, Kobee is both a navigator and educator; additional facts and figures, boxed and labeled “Kobee’s Fun Facts,” supplement the manatee’s explanations of the weather phenomena that the trio encounter. The book also tells its young audience, in text that doesn’t talk down to them, how to protect themselves in a thunderstorm, how storms rotate depending on the hemisphere they occupy, and how to identify different types of clouds: “white, wispy” cirrus, “creamy cotton” cumulus, and cirrocumulus resembling “fish scales.” Readers also learn of the two types of waterspouts (tornadic and fair weather), why the sky is blue, the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius, and that “a raindrop falls at an average speed of 17 miles per hour.” Despite the book’s encyclopedic quality, however, it’s a charming, simple story. The illustrations, rendered in colorful acrylic on illustration board, harmonize nicely with the active text, mixing real-world and fantasy elements in lavish sky and ocean settings.

An appealing picture book distinguished by its colorful images, creatively distilled meteorological facts, and simple but dynamic storytelling.

In this latest installment of a science- and nature-based picture book series for young children, a curious manatee journeys with old and new aquatic friends to the site of a sunken ship.

Fresh from an eventful, hurricane-tossed swim from Key West, Florida, to the Bahamas, Kobee Manatee heads out for another undersea adventure in this third volume that continues the informative series by author Thayer (Kobee Manatee: A Wild Weather Adventure, 2015, etc.) and illustrator Gallegos (Ernie’s Wish Tail, 2016, etc.). Accompanied by his pals Pablo, a hermit crab, and Tess, a sea horse, Kobee sets out for San Juan, Puerto Rico, in search of the wreckage of the SS Antonio López, a real-life, 19th-century ship sunk during the Spanish-American War. (Its description is one of “Kobee’s Fun Facts,” tidbits that are set apart from the story’s text and highlighted throughout the book’s colorful pages.) On the way to the ship, the band is joined by a lonely octopus named Ben. When Kobee is trapped by a beam while swimming through the wreck, Ben and new friends Alis, a playful goldentail moray eel, and Sandy, a nurse shark, try to help; the arrival of an old friend, Chester, a giant plankton-eating whale shark, saves the day. As with the first two books, the full-page images of ocean flora and fauna and the exaggerated features of Kobee and friends engage the eye in a rich palette of acrylic colors, and the “Fun Facts” scrolls offer depth without denying the young audience a lively story. Most of the well-conceived morsels of information here, again contributed by oceanographer and documentarian Fabien Cousteau, identify species of fish. They include some that children might recognize—lionfish, sawfish, parrot fish—and others likely to be new to them. Among the unfamiliar denizens of the deep: a damselfish, peppermint basslet, spotted eagle ray, and blue-striped grunts, which Tess describes as looking “like lemons with blue lines swimming.” A link to Cousteau’s Ocean Learning Center is included for any reader interested in further exploration. 

Another creative blending of real-life oceanography and gentle fantasy in a smart and entertaining series.