Hello Ocean

Author: Muñoz Ryan

Illustrator: Mark Astrella

Translator: Yanitzia Canetti

Summary: Hello Ocean is about a young girl spending the day at the beach. The narrator describes her experience through the senses of sight, smell, tasting, feeling, and hearing. The book ends with the girl leaving the beach, but eventually she will come back to visit her favorite place.

Relevance to Literacy Development: This book can be used for a kindergarten class, but I would use the book for a first and second grade classroom. For a kindergarten class, the book can be used as an introduction to the five senses. In the text, each sense is in bold print to emphasize the differences to the readers. The illustrations provide readers with great imagery to increase comprehension. Not only does the book focus on the senses, it also exposes readers to the elements of figurative language such as alliteration, personification, metaphors, and rhyming. For example, the book states, "Waves that pounce in rowdy play, tide that tickles, with splashing spray, squishy, sandy, soggy ground, slippery seaweed that wraps around..." is an alliteration. Therefore, the book is useful for first and second graders to learn to identify a pattern within a text. Since I am an ESL minor, I love how the book provide Spanish translations on each page next to the sentence in English. As a result, the ESL students will have the opportunity to make connections from their native language and apply it to the target language to become a successful reader.