Kid Guides: Aquariums

This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!

Marilyn Hersh, Hillside Elementary School, Farmington Hills, MI -- School Library Journal, 8/7/2008

Kid Guides: Aquariums. DVD. 88 min. Prod. by Echo Entertainment. Dist. by Janson Media. 2007, 2008 release. ISBN 978-1-56839-297-4. $19.95.

Gr 1-6–Want to see through a jellyfish? Watch sharks being fed? See what a tuna looks like? Matt and Brittney, two young narrators, take viewers on amazing tours of three of the best aquariums in the United States. In each location, live-action photography and interviews with trainers and keepers offer an up close visit to an aquarium. Each tour starts with a map pinpointing the location. After a quick city tour of famous landmarks, Matt and Brittney enter the aquarium. The photography of each facility and the marine life is breathtaking. At the Downtown Aquarium in Houston, there are sea horses, a diver in a tank, and a white tiger being trained to hunt using a papier-mâché animal. Viewers are taken under a glass tank of sharks and visit piranhas. The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago house green sea turtles, Amazon fish and reptiles, a coral reef exhibit, a trainer working with beluga whales, and more. A vet, while conducting physical exams on sharks, talks about careers in animal husbandry and veterinary medicine. The Monterey Bay regional aquarium in California is next, where all the sea animals are local to the waters right outside the aquarium. A curator demonstrates how they grow their own kelp. There are touch tanks, a marine sanctuary, splash zones where the kids put on wetsuits and dive tanks to get inside the exhibits. The “Explorer’s Corner” section reviews the previous three segments. Wonderful music segues between exhibits. Matt and Brittney sparkle with child-like delight and ask intelligent questions. Each segment can be selected individually from the DVD menu. This gem is the next best thing to an actual visit to these aquariums.