The celebrated author of On the Day You Were Born shares the beauty of a visit to the beach in a lavishly illustrated picture book that comes with a detailed glossary of the ocean treasures depicted within its pages. "My mother says you can ask the ocean to bring you something. If you look, she says, you might find it." So begins the child narrator in Debra Frasier's Out of the Ocean , a loving tribute to the sea. For over 35 years, Frasier's family lived just north of Vero Beach, Florida, in a house overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. During that time, she combed the shore, took many pictures, and finally wrote this beachy paean. Close-up photographs of sand allow readers to see every raspy grain, and cut-paper collages splash across the sandy, shell-strewn background to form incoming surf or dune plants such as periwinkle and hibiscus. As readers walk along the shore with the author, we find beach glass, flotsam, a little jetsam, pelican feathers, black skate egg pouches, and other shore-side marvels. The little girl asks the ocean to show her treasures like these, but her mother asks for things that are too big to carry home--water, the sun, the moon, the sound of waves. A glossary in the back provides more information on shells, finding messages in bottles, and egg pouches, and plants and trees, in addition to things too big to carry home. If you've ever wanted to introduce the ocean to a child who's never seen it, this book captures the dreamy sights, smells, sounds, and textures. (Ages 4 to 8) -- Karin Snelson PreSchool-Grade 3?"My mother says you can ask the ocean to bring you something." Frasier evokes the limitless possibilities of a summer beach day and personalizes it through the conversations of a mother/daughter pair. A sense of the ocean as gift giver is projected, registering the beachcombers' hopes and satisfying them when the time is right. In this manner, objects washed ashore, from a wooden shoe to bottles with messages, all seem charged with magic. Frasier incorporates full-color snapshots with cut-paper art. Her illustrations stretch over double-page spreads. Close-up photos of sand provide the background. As in On the Day You Were Born (Harcourt, 1991), the layout is inventive and effective, whether cradling the text or propelling readers on to the next page. Boldly framed silhouettes of the narrator and her mother are juxtaposed onto beach scenes, creating a feeling of depth, a window into a more spiritual dimension. The book ends with a six-page "Ocean Journal" that gives background on the featured found objects: sharks' teeth, sea-turtle tracks, black skate egg pouches, beach glass. A satisfying offering that will open doors for its readers.?Liza Bliss, Worcester Public Library, MA Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Relief for the land-locked comes in the form of this book, which delivers the salt smells and sea sounds that accompany beachcombers right to readers' laps. Frasier (On the Day You Were Born, 1991, not reviewed, etc.) combines full-color seashore photographs and cut-paper shapes in tropical-colored collages. As a mother and daughter walk the beach, the child is fascinated by collecting material things such as shells, beach glass, a wooden shoe, and shark's eggs. The mother takes in bigger things: the sun, sea turtle tracks, and the wash of waves on the beach. When the little girl protests that those things are always there, her mom explains her secret``the bigger the thing, the easier it is to forget to see it.'' A photographic afterword explains the significance of the beachcombing finds that are pictured, from a wooden shoe to a glass float. Frasier also chronicles the life cycle of the sea turtle, whose tracks she saw, explains how notes in a bottle get transported by ocean currents, and reveals which finds are rare. The value of this treasure hunter's appreciation is in the notion that real ``treasure'' is in the looking. (Picture book. 6-9) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. ...a wonderful mishmash ... It's very low-tech and quite endearing.... an exhortation to collect and record, to use your eyes and your head to write your own story. -- The New York Times Book Review, Penelope Green