Aska's Sea Creatures

As its title indicates, this collection of poems serves primarily as a showcase for Aska's (Aska's Animals; Aska's Birds) stylish artwork. His electrically colored, often impressionistic paintings occupy three-fourths of each spread, while Day's (The Emperor's Panda) three- and four-line verses, set against the remaining white space, address such denizens of the deep as Stingray, Angler Fish, Coral and Octopus. Mostly non-rhyming, the poetry, too, is more impressionistic than literal; though often playfully evocative, the haiku-like structure and imagery may be too sophisticated for some youngsters. In ``Humpback Whale,'' for example, ``Titanic opera singer; a diva of the deep;/ Your voice resounds through the fishy world./ Your notes reach down into the depths and/ up again to the heavens.'' While some of Aska's paintings offer brilliant undersea panoramas-a swarm of vivid yellow butterfly fish, an almost fluorescent dolphin school, ``Leaping, laughing and chattering''-some are stylized representations that might well prove more confusing than informative. All ages. (June)