Bound To Stay Bound

Other - 03/24/2025 Cusolito (Diving Deep) starts this gripping real-time picture book account with a splash: as the work opens, a dinghy of people looking for sperm whales spots a clan, and a free diver slips over the edge. The diver’s long, arcing flippers make him look like an aquatic creature himself as he approaches. Lanan (Jumper) captures with elegance the way the whales’ massive bodies dwarf that of the diver, who realizes with amazement that the whales are guarding a newborn calf-"with wrinkled skin and folded fluke." Like the infant whale, who needs to be nudged to the surface to take its first breath, the diver, too, must head upward in "a rush of bubbles as he exhales, ‘Hwaaahh!’/ breathes in, ‘whooooh!’ " When he dives again, he witnesses the whales joining in a moment of underwater communion that sees him involved, too. This breath-by-breath glimpse offers a magnificent snapshot of an otherwise hidden moment that conveys with deep emotional impact the parallels of creaturely life. Ample back matter includes creators’ notes. Human characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4-8. (June) - Copyright 2025

School Library Journal - 05/30/2025 Gr 2–4—Gr 2–4 An ocean diver encounters a pod of whales. What would already be a magnificent encounter is enriched when one of the whales gives birth! The young calf's first breaths coincide with the diver surfacing for air. A kinship forms as the diver's and whale's movements coincide. Eventually, the whale pod leaves, and the diver surfaces from this life-altering experience. After a couple of books about decomposing whale corpses (including Lynn Brunelle and Jason Chin's stunning Life After Whale), it is refreshing to have a book celebrating a whale birth. Vocabulary is advanced, but the writing is succinct. The text incorporates effervescent onomatopoeia with whooshing exhales and pfff-ing bubbles. Words are thoughtfully spaced on the page, and the layout often evokes movement. For instance, the word "down" repeats vertically, mimicking the diver's descent. Lanan's depiction of the ocean is masterful. The surface sparkles as if glitter is sprinkled on the page. Under the sea, dappled light shines on the whale family. The diver dances across the page, making elegant arcs and swirls with long, black fins. In one stunning spread, the diver and the baby whale seem impossibly small amidst the crowd of underwater leviathans. Back matter includes a detailed diagram of a female sperm whale's internal structure, notes about free diving, and lengthy author and illustrator notes about their inspiration for this beautiful creation. VERDICT A masterpiece of illustration, this book is essential for all collections.—Chance Lee Joyner - Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 06/01/2025 *Starred Review* If ever the description of a rare natural encounter will leave readers filled with wonder, look to these spare, luminous observations of a sperm-whale pod clustering about a just-born calf. Basing her work on a free diver’s actual experiences, Cusolito describes how a mother whale presents her newborn to each whale in attendance—as well as to the awed diver suspended nearby—while carefully hovering in attendance as the newborn’s crumpled flukes slowly unfurl, nudging it toward the surface periodically to take a breath, and at last leading it down into deeper waters. Becoming “one with the whales,” the diver likewise must return at intervals to the surface to exhale (“hwaaahh!”) and refill his lungs (“whooooh!”) in a stately rhythm that finds visual echoes in Lanan’s images of massive whales and their watcher curving around and about one another through deep fields of blue in a graceful “underwater ballet”: “Who’s studying whom?” The dance culminates in an eye-filling foldout whirl, with an equally enthralling glimpse in the back matter of a female sperm whale’s anatomy, accompanied by further facts about whales and about free diving. - Copyright 2025 Booklist.