HOTEL DEEP

The author/illustrator of Oddhopper Opera (2001) dives to a marine setting for 21 equally witty encounters between various undersea denizens and a small, strayed, rightly anxious sardine. The poems range from direct conversations—“How do you do? / Who do you eat? / Have you been chased? / Glad we could meet. / How do you taste? / How do you do? / Won’t it be wonderful, / swallowing you?”—to general observations (“All the spiny lobsters trust / The guy behind, because they must”), and often twist through or around elaborate underwater scenes featuring exactly rendered creatures (identified in a visual key at the end) placed against arabesque traceries of rock and coral. Though untitled, so that it’s sometimes hard to tell where one leaves off and the next begins, the poems are linked by a plot line that climaxes with both a curtain call for the entire cast, and that sardine’s happy reunion with a teeming silver swirl of compatriots. A fine, finny outing, equally suitable for a quick dip or full immersion. (Picture book/poetry. 6-10)