The Whale Who Swam Through Time by Alex Boersma and Nick Pyenson

In The Whale Who Swam Through Time, the life cycle of the bowhead whale, the longest living mammal is explored.

The bowhead whale can live a long time, so this story begins two hundred years earlier, with a young bowhead whale who rests with her mother in the cold, Arctic water. They encounter boats, some are small, others are large, wooden boats with sails. The young whale is just a calf, but within the year she will set out on her own. First she must learn how to break through the thick Arctic ice using her curved snout and eat using her baleen, thick long bristles that filter tiny sea animals including copepods out of the water.

With the passing years, the bowhead whale grows larger and larger until at twenty-five years she is fully grown.

One hundred and fifty years ago, the young whale migrates to a bay with her calf, the fifth she has given birth to. The waters are calm and clear, so sound travels easily. However, the bowhead must deal with whalers who have come to hunt her for her blubber which is used for oil and food. These whaling ships are noisy. The whale and her calf narrowly miss being harpooned, as they dive deep into the oceean.

Fifty years ago even more changes have come about. The whale is now over one hundred years old. Whaling ships have been replaced by large oil platforms. The ocean is no longer quiet. There is the clang of the oil rig's machinery, the roar of a cargo ship's propeller and the pink of a submarine's sonar. These sounds travel very far underwater and make it hard for the bowhead whale to hear the calls of her grandchildren.

Today, the grand bowhead whale is noticing less sea ice, more ships and the danger from their propellers, more oil spills, more fishing lines and plastic garbage in the oceans.But the warmer oceans also mean more food and more whales.What will the next two hundred years hold for her grandchildren?

Discussion

The Whale Who Swam Through Time is an exquisite picture book about the life of the bowhead whale. Boersma and Pyenson focus on telling the story of one whale's life span and the changes she would have experienced over the last two hundred years. This is done using short paragraphs accompanied by the beautiful artwork of author/illustrator Alex Boersma. Although the text is filled with interesting facts about bowhead whales, it is the rich illustrations in a blue, grey and white palette that truly captivate the reader. The illustrations were rendered in" watercolor, gouache, and colored inks on hot press watercolor paper, and finished in Adobe Photoshop."

The authors have included a detailed section at the back of the book that offers much more information on bowhead whales and other Arctic creatures, as well as whaling and on the Inuit peoples in the Arctic. In their Author's Note, Boersma and Pyenson mention that they wondered when you live for over two hundred years, "...what is it like to see the word change around you? That question was the starting point for this book." Writing this picture book required the authors to use their imaginations. "We'll never understand how bowheads experience time, or how they perceive or feel about the changes in their environment, but we hope that this book helps you to both imagine how other creatures exist in this world and consider how our actions impact them." What a great goal to aspire to!

Book Details:

The Whale Who Swam Through Time by Alex Boersma and Nick Pyenson
New York: Roaring Book Press   2022