Parents' Guide to

Otis and Will Discover the Deep: The Record-Setting Dive of the Bathysphere

By Regan McMahon, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 5+

Exciting story of launching 1930 deep-sea diving tank.

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This exciting, suspenseful account of the Bathysphere's first deep-ocean dive vividly conveys the thrill of scientific discovery and celebrates the passion and drive of the diving tank's two creators. Barb Rosenstock's text is gripping and informative, and Katherine Roy's you-are-there watercolor illustrations plunge readers into the story, pulling them along through the briny deep, as fish, eels, squid, jellyfish, and then-unnamed species swim by. She uses warm earth tones on land and cool blues and greens under the sea, while endpapers highlight and label selected fish and creatures. An author's note includes archival photographs of the two men and the Bathysphere. And a fascinating illustrator's note recounts the lengths to which Roy went, imagining and simulating what it was like for Otis and Will, two 6-foot-tall men, to be cramped in their tiny 4.5-foot-wide sphere.

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