Saving the Seas for the Purple and Green by Nancy Carlisle Book Tour, Guest Post & Giveaway! {Ends 9/9/22}

Review By LAWonder10:

Saving the Seas for the Purple and Green is a very informative book on a few ocean creatures and what they face when thoughtless acts of pollution occur.

The illustrations are very colorful. The landscape scenes are beautiful. However, I am not a fan of the abstract cartoonish character images. The rest was very well done.

The book was very informative but way beyond the attention level of the age group it was intended for. I would suggest it would be more appropriate for mid to upper elementary age children. 

Although the information is interesting and well done, it would have been more effective at the end of the story with the main content centering on the young girls story.

All in all, I feel it earns a Four Stars rating.

*This book was gifted me with no pressure for a positive review. This is my honest review.

How book writing is similar to my past profession of architecture?

Good question! I like to think about ideas—in designing a building the ideas might take the
form of questions such as, what do you want your space to look and feel like, how do you want to use the space, how do you want the spaces to connect to one another, how much natural light do you want in each space, etc. As an Architect, from these questions, and interviews, I could propose options for the  hape of the building.

Writing a kid’s book, I start off in a similar
way thinking about the book concept, and what are the key messages, how might the pages be designed, what emotions will the book evoke, what are the two or three key story points. In both cases, I start with the big ideas.

Coming up with the big ideas is one of the interesting parts in both processes then the detailed part begins. For a building design, it is getting the drawings completed correctly with all the details for space plus structure, plumbing, heating, cooling, etc.. For a book there are many details as well, the facts and drawings need to be accurate, the words need to convey the right emotions and be age appropriate, the text and pictures must be well integrated, and the drawings need to be consistent from page to page.

Just like a building design, a books image (the illustrations) must be well integrated with the
function of the book (the story). Both a building and book should evoke an emotion. For a house, the emotion might be cozy, monumental, or well-integrated into the natural environment. For a children’s book, the emotion might be funny or scary or comforting. In terms of the steps in the process, both architecture and children’s books involve synthesizing a lot of data and ideas to clearly express the final product. Both processes involve many steps and the use of specialists. For books the specialists are the editors, writers, layout designer, illustrator, sales, web designer, etc. In a way a children’s book author is like an architect because they also orchestrate a complicated process to reach the final product.