one of the tests of television’s capacity to educate is to ask someone who chants that David Attenborough-narrated nature documentaries are very educational – well what exactly did you learn. It does not get much beyond that the world is a wonderful green place full of amazing creatures that do very odd things.
Now we have the Blue Planet series. I have been transfixed by it. But all that had changed educationally is that the world is a wonderful BLUE place full of amazing creatures that do very odd things.
Well, The Blue Planet now has an educational supplement, the book of the series. It is packed with facts, explanations and analyses that cannot possibly be absorbed through the narration on the television series.
The photography is astonishing, but it is more than a coffee table book because of the excellence of the text, describing things like how waves and tides are created where ocean currents flow and how creatures make use of them. But it has one good element of a coffee table book in that it is good for opening at random and reading a small, well written piece on what is coral, or how do deep undersea creatures create bioluminescence, why do some species change sex, why does ice float and how different the world would be if it did not, how deep can a seal dive, why do mangroves only grow on the sea’s edge and so on.
The Blue Planet book would be a great book to have for those who holiday at the coast – particularly those foolish enough to go in January (the highest rainfall month) so they can have something apposite to read while sitting inside out of the rain.