  | Welcome to whalebone mansion : creatures that lurk at a whale fall Author: Slate, Laken | |
| Price: $22.58 | ||
Summary:
A whale skeleton lies on the bottom of the ocean, and looks a bit like a haunted house as it provides nutrients for deep-water creatures.
| Illustrator: | James, Bindy |
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (07/15/25)
School Library Journal (10/01/25)
Booklist (00/09/25)
Full Text Reviews:
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.
