I want to help my wife find a book that her mom used to read to her. Mom says it was a paperback picture book and the pages had metallic highlights so they sparkled. The cover had the main character on it, a young girl who had long brown hair and eyeglasses and she was surrounded by seaweed.
In the story/poem the girl falls into the ocean and encounters a variety of sea creatures as a result.
Some lines and plot points from my wife and mother-in-law’s memories:
“…and arm in arm we danced way down, until we reached octopus town. And there we saw one hundred more, eight hundred legs, one hundred heads, dancing in their seaweed beds”.
A line toward the end of the story describes something involving a dense school of sardines or mackerel as “bits of silver hit like hail”
In the end, the main character is being chased by a shark and wakes up, falling out of her bed.
Thank you so much!
Follow That Fish, by Joanne Oppenheim.
Yesssssss, thank you so much Mama Squirrel! Mother-in-law reports that that is indeed the correct book.
Great! Thanks for letting us know.