Sheldon and Blythe Help Us See How Precious The Whales' Song Is

One of my favorite movies is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. While the clash of two cultures several hundred years apart makes it easily the funniest of the Star Trek films, its underlying message about the importance of preserving our endangered species is very serious indeed. "To hunt a species to extinction is not logical," Spock observes. Yet this is what has happened, and it's why a mysterious probe is ripping apart the Earth of the future with its unanswered whalesong, one of the most haunting series of vocalizations I have ever heard. We don't know just why the humpbacks sing, but we want them to be able to continue performing their underwater concerts for centuries to come.

In Dyan Sheldon's The Whales' Song, a folksy story driven by a series of richly detailed oil paintings by Gary Blythe, a mystical old woman imparts the magic of such musical offerings to her wide-eyed grand-daughter, Lilly. The setting seems to be an old fishing village, evidently not doing so well now that the whales are gone, evidently driven away by the likes of Frederick, a harsh-mannered whale hunter who appears to be the brother of the old woman. "Whales were important for their meat, and for their bone, and for their blubber. If you have to tell Lilly about the whales, then tell her something useful," he chides. "Don't fill her head with nonsense. Singing whales, indeed!"

We don't actually know the extent to which the whales have disappeared; I presume that they haven't been hunted to extinction in the context of this book but have sought refuge far from the reach of humanity, drawing near only on the rarest of occasions to connect with those individuals who understand how bereft the world would be without these majestic creatures. But there is a definite elegiac tone here that is unusual for a picture book.

The story is not particularly wordy, but I would probably recommend this for slightly older children. It would be a good book to read to a class of first- or second-graders as part of a unit on conservation. The lyrical style of the grandmother's storytelling effectively imparts the wisdom of protecting these ancient and magnificent giants of the ocean for the good of all.

While all of the illustrations are exquisite, the most entrancing ones are those depicting the whales gliding gracefully along underwater or bursting up through the waves, disrupting the serene horizon with their spray. In these paintings, we can almost hear the whales ourselves, and we are filled with the desire to experience such a phenomenon. The Whales' Song, then, is an important book, imparting a crucial lesson in the most artistic of ways. May the song of the whales continue warming the waters far into the future.