Trapped! A Whale's Rescue

Frequent collaborators Burleigh and Minor present a tense story of an attempt to free a humpback whale entangled in crab traps, based on a real-life event off the California coast in 2006. Burleigh writes in three-line passages that evoke the feeling of haiku ("The struggle begins./ The web of ropes cuts into her skin./ She flails, starts to sink, / fights for air"), while Minor's gouache paintings highlight the whale's immensity, strength, and vulnerability as small human divers attempt to cut her free of the ropes binding her. Endnotes detailing the event that inspired the book, as well as information about humpbacks and the dangerousness of whale rescues, round out a quietly dramatic survival story.
-Publishers Weekly

*Based on an event that took place near San Francisco in 2005, this picture book depicts a humpback whale swimming, diving, and feeding freely until she becomes entangled in abandoned, drifting nets. Her struggles draw the ropes tighter until, trapped, she stops and lies still. Boats bring rescuers to the scene. Five divers cut the lines, one by one, until the whale can swim again. "She moves among the cheering rescuers, softly nudging each one, as if saying thanks." The whale breaches and swims away. In Minor's beautifully composed gouache paintings, the whale is a silent but enormously empathetic character. Several appended pages offer more information about the actual event, whale rescues in general, and humpback whales in particular. Adults reading the book aloud may want to introduce words such as spyhop, lobtail, fluke, and krill before beginning, to avoid breaking the cadence of the writing once the story is underway. Like the stately illustrations, the precise prose has a dignity that is worthy of its subject and unusual in a picture book for preschool and primary-grade children. Although the episode of the whale's entrapment and release is short, it will linger in young listeners' minds long after the book is closed.
-Booklist, *starred review