SOLVED. Children's Picture book about a girl whose mother died, so the girl goes down to the ocean and the ocean opens for her and she is led by a realistic-looking whale to a palace of the whales, where she sees her mother but can't stay with her. [s]

[Arden Lee]

Read the book around 2010, but it seems like a slightly older book.

The whale pictures (it was a picture book) looked extremely realistic. It led the girl to the palace of the whales, and there was a scene where the girl was walking down the hallway, next to the whale, and the walls on either side of her were glass and she could see other people in the rooms, but they couldn't see her. Eventually, the whale led her to a room where her mother was, but she couldn't stay with her mother. I think the book was a kind-of creepy (as in, the pictures were very realistic-looking) book and the whale was explaining death and really deep things like that, but it was creepy because it was like the mother died and was forever trapped in the palace of the whales or something like that. A somewhat dark book both in theme, and the pictures were all (I think) done in shades of blue (most of the book occurred under water, at the whale palace) and grays.

[Sirvantes]

The details of the story are a little different, but this may be Okino and the Whales, by Arnica Esterl

[SamSpayedPI]

Okino and the Whales for Sirvantes' link.

[Arden Lee]

I think that's the book! Thank you so much!!!

[Sirvantes]

Glad we could help you.

[Kris]

Ilayda, should we mark your request as Solved?

Publishers Weekly description of Okino and the Whales by Arnica Esterl on Amazon:
"...meticulously rendered, quasi-photographic paintings... 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."

[Arden Lee]

Kris wrote: "Ilayda, should we mark your request as Solved?

Publishers Weekly description of Okino and the Whales by Arnica Esterl on Amazon:
"...meticulously rendered, quasi-pho..."

Hello! Yes, that would be fine with me. Thanks so much to all who helped!!!