Waiting for High Tide

K-Gr 4—"I can see everything on this beach…." The child protagonist of McClure's marvelous picture book shows readers exactly how much there is to see while waiting for the tide to come in. From the soaring seagull to a broken pair of sunglasses to "all the life in the mud too small to see or fathom," the child chronicles the treasures to be found by those who are willing to look. The work of this particular turn of tide is to lash together logs, poles, and planks to make a raft. Mother, father, and grandmother work alongside the hatchet-wielding child and then leap again and again into the water, a reward for a long, patient day of work and observation. McClure's cut-paper images are at once sweeping in their scale and extraordinary in their detail. In one wordless spread, the family rests and eats lunch, a seaplane takes off, gulls swoop down on clams, and a heron stands in the shallow water, waiting for its lunch. A page turn brings viewers underwater to a close-up on the heron's single leg, surrounded by barnacles, plankton, crabs, and fish. This book shares more in length and complexity of text with To Market to Market (Abrams, 2011) than McClure's more recent books for younger audiences. It would make a wonderful West Coast companion to Robert McCloskey's One Morning in Maine.