Hidden Treasure

A young girl, her dog and her papa head off to the beach to search for treasures on a beautiful sunny day. Readers might wonder what kind of treasures she is looking for, but she says, “treasure is…everywhere. You don’t need a map to know it’s there.” Soon the little girl is wandering the beach finding stones, looking for things that catch the light and wondering where each treasure has come from. Once she has found enough treasures for the day, she picks which one she loves the best and saves it in her treasure tin. At the end of the day, the little girl realizes that the best part of finding treasures at the beach was simply being with Papa and her dog.

The cover of this picture book immediately catches the eye with a bright blue background taking up most of the cover and the image of a single child swimming through what readers now realize is water. As readers open the book, they see a full spread of a beach scene on the inside cover which hints at the uniqueness of the illustrations to come. As readers turn more pages, a yellow glow comes off the pages which sets the tone for this book’s taking place on a sunny, summer’s day. The illustrations are wonderful to examine in depth as the author/illustrator layers various media to create an entire image which she then photographs for the book. The illustrations are definitely the stand-out feature of this picture book with the clearest example of their uniqueness being the ocean scenes which have a sort of clear, crinkly plastic used to depict the moving water. The rhyming text of the book is where things start to slide. While the rhymes all work, it takes some practice to get the right flow for reading as not all the lines come naturally. Some of the lines feel a little forced, lines such as: “When I’m here, I feel like a queen. So I think I know what treasure means.” Barring the awkward text, Hidden Treasure is a lovely picture book that would easily inspire nature hunts and discussions around the natural world.