Dive into the rich ecol­o­gy of tide pools and watch a hid­den world spring in this mas­ter­ful non­fic­tion pic­ture book for very young readers.

Twice a day when the tide goes out, an aston­ish­ing world is revealed in the tide pools that form along the Pacif­ic Coast.

Some of the crea­tures that live here look like stone. Oth­ers look like plants. Some move so slow­ly it’s hard to tell if they’re mov­ing at all, while oth­ers are so fast you’re not sure you real­ly saw them. The biggest ani­mals in the pool are small­er than your hand, while the small­est can’t be seen at all with­out a micro­scope.

Dur­ing low tide, all these crea­tures — big, small, fast, slow — are exposed to air and the sun’s dry­ing heat. And so they have devel­oped ways to sur­vive the wait until the ocean’s return.