What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
This topic is about
The World Beyond the Waves
SOLVED: Children's/YA
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SOLVED. Children's novel, teenage girl learns from a seabird and a fish about marine conservation
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Okay, the folks on Reddit were quick, this is now solved! It was The World Beyond the Waves by Kate Kempton.
I recall the title as "Through Sam's Eyes", but I'm 90% sure that I've misremembered it in some form, because I haven't been able to find remotely relevant results from any book database by searching that up.
The protagonist (the "Sam" mentioned in the title, unless her name is one of the things I'm misremembering) is a teenage girl who starts out the story taking a sailing vessel out to sea during a family excursion. She is not very enthusiastic about the trip. She watches a tropicbird trying to land on the mast and thinks of it as foolish.
She ends up losing consciousness (I think she fell overboard) and starts getting visions of the tropicbird speaking to her. His name is Dipper, apparently. He shows her an underground network of tunnels that have pools in them, which are inhabited by sea creatures in need of shelter. There she is greeted by a coelacanth (I remember his name as Joseph) who becomes another one of her guides at the facility. He is able to travel through the tunnels in a mobile water bubble. "Sam" meets several of the animals staying in the pools, including a marlin with a hook stuck in their jaw, and realizes that many of them have been harmed by human actions.
She eventually awakens to the relief of her understandably very concerned family members, having gained a newfound appreciation for the ocean and the importance of protecting it, etc.
I remember the cover being mostly turquoise/teal. There was an illustration of "Sam" standing in the center, with Dipper and Joseph on either side of and slightly behind her. The characters were drawn in a fairly realistic style, not cartoonized in their features or proportions.