Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 10/01/2025 Gr 1–3—Just in time for Halloween, this odd mash-up imagines that a whale fall, the body of a deceased whale, is a spooky haunted house with ghoulish, slimy, hungry, bone-eating animals. Although sidebars provide accurate information about a whale fall, an ecosystem that nurtures other animals, the main text maintains the spooky and heavily fictionalized narration, e.g., it's largely narrated by two small fish that could never swim to the deep water where a whale fall settles. There are vampire squid, bone-eating zombie worms, and ghoulish goblin sharks mentioned, with sidebars and back matter offering links to other information. As part of a Halloween read-aloud, the book offers the slime, fangs, and ghoulish content children like, but those interested in learning more about whale falls have Melissa Stewart's Whale Fall: Exploring an Ocean-Floor Ecosystem and Lynn Brunelle's Life After Whale: The Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale.VERDICT The topic is worth exploring, but whale falls are not haunted and the elegance of how they function within the natural world and ecosystem is anything but spooky.—Myra Zarnowski - Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 09/01/2025 “Did someone dare you to sneak inside a haunted house?” For two little fish, the creepy Whalebone Mansion is actually the giant sunken skeleton of a dead whale, also known as a whale fall. As the little fish swim around the skeleton, short text in a larger font relates their trepidation as they encounter such spectacular sea creatures as a ghoulish goblin shark, snakelike hagfish, and pinching crustaceans. Text boxes in a smaller font explain how these animals feast on the whale carcass. For instance, Osedax worms, also called “bone-eating snot flowers,” have no mouth or gut but can consume a whale skeleton by dissolving the bones with acid they produce. The illustrations’ dark backgrounds show off the bright animals, and the perspective grows closer and closer as the fish come in contact with each sea creature, adding to the slightly spooky tone. Back matter offers supplemental information on whale falls as ecosystems and the ocean’s midnight zone. For more in-depth studies on the topic, pair with Melissa Stewart's Whale Fall (2023) and Lynn Brunelle's Life After Whale (2024). - Copyright 2025 Booklist.