Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 01/12/2024 Gr 3–6—Noting that humpback whales are renowned for their long, repetitive songs ("This part of the book is true," the author writes. "But the rest of this book is made up"), Eggers presents Soren, a bored young humpback ("what we might consider a teenager") who thinks that short, catchy numbers "with melodies, and choruses, and maybe even maracas or theremins" would be far cooler. Unfortunately, his first try at a composition is so bad that one flippered listener throws up. Subsequent revisions fare no better. Even his best friend Hans is discouraging: "I would say it was awful, but it was not good enough to be awful." Undeterred, Soren keeps at it, wisely dropping the maracas along the way while incorporating what he sees and feels about his ocean world until, after many failures, he not only manages to please the lobsters (a literally hard crowd) but has the hit whale song of the year—popular even with country-music loving freshwater audiences! Hoffmann echoes the tale's jocular pitch with sinuous seascapes featuring marine fauna sporting tiny hats as well as the odd clouds of krill vomited up by chunky cetacean critics with human expressions. There's a serious message beneath all the badinage, though, about the relationship between creativity and hard work. VERDICT Despite (or because of?) murky waters that seem related to writerly indulgence, this develops a theme worth the hearing, even for creative readers well beyond the younger reaches of the picture book audience.—John Edward Peters - Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 02/01/2024 *Starred Review* Male humpback whales are the rock stars of the sea, composing new songs every year that can travel thousands of miles through the ocean. They sing to attract female humpback fans to their breeding grounds. Eggers performs a fun, inspiring riff on this fact, presenting a teen humpback, Soren, who absolutely hates the songs of his elders, dismissing them as too long and boring, and vows to compose new, snazzier songs, “maybe with maracas.” But when Soren performs his first composition, every creature around hates it. His friends hate it, including his best friend, Hans. Soren swims back to the cave that has good acoustics, revising again and again in response to Hans’ constructive criticisms until, finally, Soren puts the beauty and sound of the ocean into his song—and it’s a hit! Eggers adopts a jaunty, joking tone throughout, letting readers know what are actual facts about whales and what he’s making up. The illustrations are great at capturing the translucence of water and giving an idea of the tremendous size of the humpbacks. In this hilarious story, Eggers succeeds in giving readers one whale of a lesson on the values of learning from criticism, abandoning what isn’t working, and never giving up. - Copyright 2024 Booklist.