Okino and the Whales

This German import pairs meticulously rendered, quasi-photographic paintings with an unwieldy and imprecise text. Okino, gazing at the whales with her five-year-old son, tells him a story about a mother's fantastic voyage into the depths of the sea to find a missing daughter. The mother locates her child imprisoned behind a glass wall in the royal palace of the whales. Iwa, the Great Mother of the Ocean, agrees to free the child if the mother can weave a coat for Iwa from her own hair. This she does, with the aid of a hair-growth cream supplied by none other than Iwa. The translated text seems overwrought (a passing seagull cries to the mother, ``You must go forward, ever forward. Never stop hoping, never give up!''), but the plot elements are more strung together than developed. Fastidiously worked in a moody palette of blues, violets and greens with occasional use of warm apricots, the illustrations alone supply the volume with its eerie, dreamy mood. While it opens and closes with tender portraits of a mother and child suffused with golden light, the tale itself is cool and not easily fathomed. Ages 6-10. (Oct.)