True story. The school run started this morning with a litany of questions posed from the back seat of the car about snails and slugs. It’s a damp, grey day in London, you see, and on the pavement outside our house, the morning commute was being acted out in miniature by a seemingly endless procession of slimy creatures. This got the questions rolling for my three and four-year-olds in the car. Suddenly, though, the line of questioning veered from the easily answerable “What do slugs eat?” and “Can the snails get in the car?”, to the very left field, “Do crabs have teeth?” First, I panicked. Then, I remembered we could look it up in Yuval Zommer’s brilliant new book, The Big Book of the Blue.
The Big Book of the Blue is the third in Yuval’s Big Book Series (there are bug and beast companions). All of the books pair super-fun illustrations with engaging answers to just the kinds of questions I got hit with this morning. So, if you can relate to endless rounds of questioning on whales, snails, or honeybadgers, Yuval has the perfect series of books for you and GET THIS — we are GIVING AWAY a bumper pack of ALL THREE BOOKS and companion STICKER BOOKS for The Big Book of Bugs and The Big Book of Beasts! Head over to @twoinatepee on Instagram to get in the running to win, but before you do, here are Yuval’s five favourite fishy facts which he learned while working on The Big Book Of The Blue:
1. Sea turtles can eat jellyfish without getting stung! The problem is sometimes hungry sea turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish as both are transparent and look like floating balloons in the water. The turtle cannot digest the plastic and it can clog its stomach.
2. Flying fish are very cleverly designed by Mother Nature. Not only can they flap their fins like wings, a flying fish is also blue on top so a bird flying above can’t spot it against the sea and its silver tummy makes it look like the sky to the hungry fish swimming below!
3. As if seahorses weren’t pretty enough, every seahorse has its own special crown called a ‘coronet’. No two crowns are the same, just like a human fingerprint!
4. Sometimes the tiny krill form huge swarms that can make the ocean look pink. Krill swarms have been seen from space! Some krill can even glow in the dark and shimmer under the surface of the sea.
5. Crabs are ‘friendly’! A crab says ‘hello’ by waving its claws. It can also send messages to other crabs by tapping on rocks!
Yuval Zommer graduated from London’s Royal College of Art with an MA in Illustration. He has worked as a creative director at many leading advertising agencies.
Yuval’s passion for picture books has now won, and he is the author/illustrator of many highly acclaimed children’s books. Yuval lives and works in an old house in Notting Hill where he overlooks a small garden which is visited by urban foxes, squirrels, birds and many insects, some of which later find their way into his stories. His other favourite places are The Natural History Museum and the Zoo.
Yuval has won the Heart of Hawick’s Children’s Book Award 2015 in the best new picture book category and his work has been nominated for the SLA Information Book Award 2017 and the 2018 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal.
Two in a Tepee 
What a marvelous addition to the series! This is the perfect companion for my daughter who is currently obsessed with the sea (she is dressed as a mermaid as I write this).😊
Love your Instagram feed… Thanks for the recommendations! The Big Blie books are beautiful.
My girls would loooove this book so much! They both are very much interested in the sea and its fauna. Thanks!
I’m @pinaponteca on IG
I love the fun facts!
This book looks beautiful, I would love to read this with my twins so they can learn more about the big blue
This book is so incredible. I recently got it from my husband for mother’s day to share with my daughters. My eldest daughter, 3is obsessed with anything to do with the ocean. We recently took it down to the beach to read and were so amazed at the facts, especially that sea turtles have transparent eyelids to act like goggles. This was so exciting for my three year old who has just started wearing goggles to her swimming lessons.
Check out my post about this book at @canyoutellmeastory on instagram.
If we won the other books our household would be very excited ❤️❤️❤️
The illustrations are so beautiful! Love these facts! My four and six year old would love this book!
Absolutely love the book! My daughter loves to ask questions especially about bugs and animals. I often do not have an answer to her questions and I search the web or refer to books to find answers to the passionate & curious girl who loves to learn and explore. Yulav’s books will be the perfect one for us! Love the amazing illustration along with so many awesome facts and details. Thank you so much for sharing the wonderful books!
What a fabulous book! Thanks for sharing!
What a beauty!!! Really need this book for my little one.
We loved his book on bugs and it had such gorgeous illustrations and simple text that was easy to understand even to a 3 year old. Can’t wait to read this one!
Love the illustrations ❤️
The book sounds really interesting!! I already learned new things just by reading this post. Those 5 facts were cool!!
What incredible illustrations!
Such a fab book, we’d love to read the others in the series!
I think every child is intuitively a nature lover, this books are awesome and they help encourage our little biologists and enthomologists in their search for answers. Great post.
Wow, so incredible
We love Yuval’s books with our homeschool curriculum!
The illustrations are so beautiful! This would be a great addition to our ocean study/ vacation to the beach this summer. Full of facts and engaging art!
OMG the illustrations are sooooo beautiful!! 😍😍😍😍😍
These illustrations are unbelievably beautiful!
Love the colours 😍 can’t wait to grab a copy for myself and the children
My boys love nature and Books about animals, do they would love these books!!
Such a fun and brilliant book on sea facts! 🎉🐚 Illustrations are spot on, children would love it really!
We love these books! The big book of bugs is the favorite for our homeschool bug study.
Such an engaging book. Gorgeously illustrated and written in a way that is kid-friendly but doesn’t ‘dumb’ things down’ for them-children are so clever! Happy to see the theme of sustainability in those facts too…so tragic what plastics (we) are doing to our ocean.
Wow. I just learnt something new just by reading this post! Brilliant books, and wonderful illustrations. My curious children will love these books, for sure.
Absolutely love this book. All your book suggestions are really great and this is one of the best books so far. Excited to see my five year old reactions when I will read this to read. Love the bright colors of pictures used in the book and so informative at the same time. Thank you for sharing.
What a fantastic post! His books are such a delightful blend of just-enough-detail illustrations (accurate but kid-appealing) and fun information. My book-loving, fact-devouring kiddos would go bananas for these! 😄
I can’t believe we don’t have this series! It looks amazing!
Looks a fabulous book! Great for little ones to learn from aided of course by the fantastic illustrations.
Oh I can’t wait to read these with my daughter, Rosa- she’s obsessed with facts about the animal kingdom, especially basking sharks!
Big Book Blue, how much I want you, do you have any clue?
In this small, small world, it will be magical to read the Big Books series.
So very excited by Yuval Zommer’s newest book! We have a few of his others and my children (ages 9,7 & 1) LOVE THEM! I love them for the knowledge and science aspects and the beautiful illustrations. The colours and layout are fantastic and fascinating. A win all around in my opinion!
Would love these books, my daughter wants to be a vet specialising in insects
These books look amazing!