Sally's Submarine

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 1As in the collaborators' ingenious Richie's Rocket (1993) and Harry's Helicopter (1990, both Morrow), Ancona uses trick photography to send a child on a voyage in a cardboard, obviously homemade craftbut this variation on the theme takes a nosedive in quality. Young Sally sends her father off in his fishing boat, then climbs inside her orange submarine to playand suddenly she's far out at sea, following a helpful seal, hiding from a shark, and being whirled back to shore by a sounding whale. Unlike the previous books, the full-color photographs are not convincing. In several views, the sharply renderedand drychild or sub is obviously superimposed on a blurred marine scene; worse yet, text and photos do not always agree. A ``giant lobster'' turns out to be smaller than Sally's forearm, and there are no fish to be seen in a shot where she is supposedly surrounded by them. A substandard offering.John Peters, New York Public Library