Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue

Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue joins the two earlier board books in “The First West Coast Book” series, Hello Humpback! and One Eagle Soaring.

The opening spread asks the question, “THROUGHOUT THE SEASONS, what do you see?” And the answers, distributed over nine single pages and spreads are nine colours found in West Coast settings and the area’s flora or fauna. The brief rhyming text directs readers’ focus to what they should be looking at/for. Sometimes that direction points to a specific feature on a page, such as is the case with “PURPLE SEA STARS on a rock”. However, the four sea stars in this spread are not the only thing that is purple as there are shades of purple in the water and in the distant silhouetted shore line. In other cases, such as “SNOW crisp and WHITE”, the entire page is to be the visual focus. On an essentially all-white page, broken only by the black text and a few stalks of dead vegetation, a ptarmigan in its winter camouflage plumage can just be discerned, its black eye and beak betraying its presence. That same page also contains another continuing feature of this book, embossing. Tilting the book reveals that a bird, rendered in the two-dimensional Northwest Coast art style, has been overlaid on the field of snow. Young children’s eyes can see the outline of the glossy bird while their fingers can trace its raised shape.

Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue is visually stunning, and children (and adult readers) will want to return to its pages and linger over its images that resonate with a quiet peacefulness. In addition to the Northwest Coast art style utilized throughout the board book, readers are reminded of the area’s connection to its original peoples via the silhouettes of log canoes that frequently appear in the illustrations.

Sockeye Silver, Saltchuck Blue is more than just an introduction to colours. Like the previous books in “The First West Coast Book” series, it provides an introduction to an area of Canada and its founding culture as well as an art style. The book’s contents can likely be appreciated by an audience older than that normally associated with the board book genre.