Life After Whale : The Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale Fall by Lynn Brunelle, illus. by Jason Chin (review)

Reviewed by: Life After Whale: The Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale Fall by Lynn Brunelle, illus. by Jason Chin Kate Quealy-Gainer Brunelle, Lynn Life After Whale: The Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale Fall; illus. by Jason Chin. Porter/Holiday House, 2024 48p Trade ed. ISBN 9780823452286 18. 99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780823459254 11. 99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 4-6 As science-minded kids get further into elementary school, they'll likely begin to understand that the "circle of life" is a lovely concept but a far less pretty process. Nature, after all, is nothing if not messy, and this month's Big Picture offers an exploration of an only recently discovered natural phenomenon that is both majestic and grotesque: the whalefall, the death and decomposition of a whale. Brunelle's engaging scientific text and Chin's reliably magnificent artwork make a complicated and decades-long biological process easily accessible and endlessly fascinating. The 400-pound heart of Brunelle's 85-foot-long blue whale is on its last beats. After ninety-plus years on the move, traveling between northern icy waters and southern tropical seas, nourishing herself on krill, and producing offspring (along with other life events that are all evident in rings of earwax), this particular whale has made her final journey. But "the death of a whale awakens and ignites a cascade of new life, " a process that young readers get to follow here. It starts at the sea's surface, where the whale's bloated body is feasted upon by sharks and seabirds, and it ends all the way at the bottom of the sea, where hagfish, king crabs, and sea scuds show up for a tasty dinner. After the larger animals have gotten their fill, microscopic organisms—like the wonderfully named "bone-eating zombie worm"—and bacteria take their turn, stripping the bones. Some 150 years after the whale's death, the bones release chemicals that rise in the water, feeding plankton and algae, which in turn feed krill, which in turn feed another whale, and thus the cycle continues. With a seamless blend of scientific terminology and evocative prose, Brunelle reels her audience in, maximizing the inherent appeal of such an awe-inspiring (and sometimes stomach-churning) phenomenon with rich, cinematic descriptions. Readers first meet the whale as "the late afternoon sunlight slants through the rippled water overhead and streams down the skin on her back, " when she is gulping down "enough krill to fill a school bus. " Later, details have a delightful kind of "ick" factor, as rattail fish arrive with knifelike teeth, "spewing out chunks of whale flesh as they chew"; when the picked-over body releases hydrogen sulfide, it draws in various snails, mussels, and worms with "guts souped-up with their own sulfur-loving bacteria. " Plenty of such cool, gross tidbits of information will either delight or disgust young readers, but the vivid text also maintains an overall sequential structure, moving beyond simple trivia and compelling the narrative forward, centering the ongoing, relentless process of decay. End Page 347 Chin's delicate watercolor and gouache illustrations match the text's balance of beauty and biology, easily conveying the majesty of the enormous creature while still tending to the nitty-gritty of the body's breakdown. In one spread, the gas-filled corpse dominates the page, dwarfing even the feeding sharks, but the scene is quickly followed by the body falling through the ocean depths in a swan dive, a small thing in the sea's all-encompassing enormity. Softly rounded panels allow for a time-lapse effect that sees the whale moving through its decaying stages, while close-ups and thumbnail sketches hone in on the various benefactors of the whale's death. Luminous teals and turquoise of the surface give way to rich indigos and inky blacks of the sea's bottom, first casting the whale in shadowy hues as it reaches its final resting place. Life and color return, however, as red crabs and pink hagfish tear away flesh and vibrant greens and oranges spread across the bones, a flurry of microscopic activity that transforms the skeleton into "one of the biggest. . .