Megan falls into a magic rock pool, and meets various delightful sea creatures who attempt to help her reach the surface again. The lobster suggests that the turtle could give her a ride on its back, or perhaps the puffer fish could float her up to the surface. The wily eel tries to help, but he's too slippery. How will Megan ever reach the surface and escape the magic of the rock pool?

The things that I liked about this book were the imaginative elements of the story, the clever dialogue, and the interesting sea creatures. It's a good story, with good development and scenes that flow naturally. The dialogue is snappy and funny, and I enjoyed the banter between the characters. I also enjoyed the sea creatures that Megan meets. They are striking characters that remain memorable and endearing.

The illustrations are not that good, but I did like the color scheme of the beach scenes and underwater pools. The illustrations have a few strange places where I can't tell what the drawing is showing. For instance, there is a picture of Megan riding on the back of a turtle where I can't tell if there are bubbles coming out of Megan's mouth or if it's vomit. It looks weird, and I am not sure what is happening with the bubble/vomit.

The illustrations also use some "copy and paste" techniques that felt lazy. I would have appreciated more unique art for each page, instead of the same character illustration with a different background. It doesn't look very polished.


The formatting is very unprofessional, giving the book a sloppy look. There is no title page at the beginning of the book. There are no page numbers. There is quite a lot of punctuation missing from the text, in addition to incorrect punctuation and capitalization errors, which made it annoying to read.

There are even spacing errors between words, making it look like it was typed in a word processor instead of formatted for publishing. There are multiple typos such as "...they tried to pull the it out of the cup." A simple mistake, but something that an editor would have caught.

And the story-boarding layout and orientation of the text and illustrations could have been much better arranged. The style of the text is very amateurish, with some small, thin letters and then bold phrases in a larger size. It would also have looked better if the illustration took up the entire double-page spread, with the text layered to one side on top of the background of the illustration. This is how most picture books are arranged. Or possibly with an illustration on one side of the page, and the text on the page facing it. Instead, the illustration is in a small box at the top of each page with the text below it, and it looks awkward.

The writing uses far too many adjectives in one jumble hanging on for dear life to a single noun. The writing also describes things that are already included in the illustrations. For instance, "The sky was all pink and purple and yellow..." when the illustration clearly shows a pink, purple, and yellow sky in the background, making it redundant to describe the sky in the text.

For such a short picture book, it has many good elements in the writing, the story, and characters, but the lack of professional editing and formatting ruined my enjoyment of the book. With a good editor and a more polished art style, this could be a lovely picture book.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.