The Girl Who Built an Ocean: An Artist, an Argonaut, and the True Story of the World’s First Aquarium

Written by Jess Keating, zoologist-turned-author, the nonfiction picture book The Girl Who Built an Ocean: An Artist, an Argonaut, and the True Story of the World's First Aquarium tells the story of Jeanne Villepreux and her contributions to the scientific world. With a beautiful cover and colourful illustrations, the book dives straight into the story of Jeanne, and the narrative is full of Villepreux’s accomplishments and scientific discoveries.

Focusing on Jeanne’s scientific pioneering, especially as a woman in science, Keating delivers a beautiful, yet brief, rendition of Jeanne Villepreux’s inspiring life. The straightforward tone of the nonfiction narrative, combined with the amount of information packed in short paragraphs, however, feels slightly rushed and lacks in the expected storytelling quality of narrative picture books, even if nonfiction. Nevertheless, Jeanne’s inspiring story is fully delivered, and the book provides many points of interest to child readers. The picture book also contains valuable endpapers that contribute to the factual aspect of this nonfiction piece for children, sharing more details on Jeanne Villepreux’s life in the section “Beyond the Story,” some scientific information on the argonaut in “How Does an Argonaut Use its Shell?,” and ending with a complete timeline of Jeanne’s life and work.

To accompany Villepreux’s story and complement Keating’s narrative, The Girl Who Built an Ocean is beautifully illustrated, and many visual narrative techniques are used to aid the storytelling. Using Procreate and Photoshop on an iPad Pro, Michelle Mee Nutter created colourful and detailed illustrations that provide support to all aspects of the nonfiction narrative, showing with detail the many different phases of Jeanne’s life. The visual narrative techniques used by Michelle Mee Nutter include full-spread illustrations with sections separated by elements of the drawing — such as a measuring tape or fabric —, pages with multiple frames resembling the style of graphic novels, and more. The measuring tape is also used as a tool to develop the timeline of Jeanne’s life, making the endpapers not only very informative but also beautiful and colourful.

The Girl Who Built an Ocean would be a great choice of nonfiction for children who are interested in scientific facts and nonfiction historic figures, delivering a great direct-to-the-point rendition of Jeanne Villepreux’s life and discoveries in a beautifully illustrated picture book.

Highly Recommended

Theresa Tavares is the co-author of Contemporary Canadian Picture Books: A Critical Review for Educators, Librarians, Families, Researchers & Writers and has a professional background in publishing.