What to Read Link Up: Children’s Books About Whales

The Best Kids’ Books About Whales

Facts about whales:

• Certain varieties of whales are the largest animals on Earth. The biggest blue whale ever recorded was 30.5 meters long!
• Whales living in the wild have been known to live for up to 200 years–the oldest living mammals in the world.
• Whales are mammals that breathe air into their lungs, are warm-blooded, feed their babies milk, and even have some a little hair.
• Whales are found in all of Earth’s oceans and have been known to travel great distances, some migrating from as far as the warm waters near Mexico to the icy waters near Russia.

Some of our favorite books about whales:

•  The Whale (Lighthouse Family) by Chythia Rylant–(Ages 9-12) The Lighthouse Family series has been a favorite in my house through all three of my boys. In The Whale, Pandora, Seabold, Whistler, Lila, and Tiny have all been enjoying the love and comfort that being a family brings. It is a comfort they are unexpectedly reminded of when Whistler and Lila hear the cries of a lonely baby beluga whale named Sebastian. When they learn that he has lost his mama, the Lighthouse Family, with the help of a cranky but noble old cormorant named Huck, does all it can to bring Sebastian and his mother together again.

• Amos & Boris by William Steig–(Ages 5-8) Amos the mouse and Boris the whale: a devoted pair of friends with nothing at all in common, except good hearts and a willingness to help their fellow mammal. They meet after Amos sets out to sail the sea and finds himself in extreme need of rescue. And there will come a day, long after Boris has gone back to a life at sea and Amos has gone back to life on dry land, when the tiny mouse must find a way to rescue the great whale.

• Eric Carle’s Animals Animals–(Ages 4-8) From leaping, flying fish to dancing butterflies, and camels that “trollop along,” Eric Carle’s brilliant and colorful collage designs bring to life animal poems from such diverse sources as Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Emily Dickinson, and Jack Prelutsky, as well as Bible verses, Japanese haiku, American Indian poems and more. Eric Carle is another favorite at our house, and this book is a marvelous way to introduce young children to the joys of poetry accompanied by Eric Carle’s whimsical animal illustrations.