A few days ago I mentioned getting curious about picture books about my region. Salmon Stream, a 2000 picture book by Carol Reed-Jones, illustrated by Michael S. Maydak, is another from that source. Reed-Jones lives in my town (Bellingham, Washington), and salmon are a big deal in the Pacific Northwest.
Salmon Stream is an interesting take on a nonfiction picture book. It is highly informative, both in the text–there are three pages of dense prose educating adults (or ambitious kids) about salmon at the end of the book–and in the images, which faithfully reproduce the salmon in context. However, readers are guided through the salmon’s ecosystem and life cycle through cumulative verse: the book starts with one line, then there are two on the next page, one of which echoes the line from page 1. Page 3 has a stanza of three lines and another of four, each of which reproduces the two lines form page 2, and adds to it, building directly on what has gone before, and sometimes modifying the wording a bit.
This gives kids both an immediate structure they can anticipate, and a sense of progress and change…much like the salmon and the streams it follows. The illustrations are heavy with color and often bright, and, while salmon are always present, the salmon’s surroundings change with each page or two-page spread. This too generates continuity and change, and so works well with the text.
The poem rhymes pretty smoothly, though the rhythm wobbles a bit at times.
An interesting part of the book is the page plus at the end that is titled “How You Can Help,” followed by information on conservation acts kids could take and groups they could join.
