Excellent biography about Jacques Cousteau. However, the text is far too wordy and the choice of the font is absolutely terrible! It's too thin for the dark color palette of the pages.

I get the dark colors.....exploring the ocean is dark hued and mysterious. But something with the visuals needs to be different in order for this book to feel approachable to readers. ( )

A beautiful book that illustrated what Cousteau's impact on this world is and how his life impacted the world underneath. ( )

Manfish, by Jennifer Berne is an amazing story about a person named Jacques Cousteau. Jacques was a person out of France who knew from the minute he could remember wanted to be a manfish. He dreamed of living in the sea and being able to breath under water. When he was old enough, he was the first to create an air pressured tank that would allow people to dive down deep and see all the beauty of the sea. He also created the first case for a camera so that he could take pictures of the deep sea. As he was getting older, he advocated for the oceans and the wildlife of the sea, saying that they were getting polluted. I believe that this book would be incredible to be used in a wildlife unit for science! ( )

American author Jennifer Berne and French illustrator Éric Puybaret team up in this picture-book biography of French explorer, inventor, oceanographer and film-maker Jacques Cousteau. From his early childhood, when he found water so fascinating and made his own home movies, through his time as a sailor, the narrative here chronicles how Cousteau eventually found a way to pursue his one true passion: exploring the world's oceans. Inventing an Aqua-lung, which allowed him to stay underwater longer than ever before, he recorded what he saw with his friends and colleagues, opening up a whole new world - the underwater world - previously unknown to humanity...

Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau is the second picture-book biography of Cousteau that I have read, following upon Dan Yacarino's The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau, and on the whole I found it quite engaging. Berne's narrative is involving, and she manages both to capture the allure that the sea had for Cousteau, and to highlight all the many areas of achievement where he excelled. The accompanying artwork is lovely, with lots of bluish-green tones underwater, and some really beautiful depictions of aquatic life. I do feel that there should have been some more information as to dates, something entirely missing from both the main narrative and the author's note. Many child readers won't already be familiar with Cousteau, so that information could be very helpful to them, in situating him in a historical context. Leaving that criticism aside, this is one I would recommend to picture-book readers interested in the oceans, in exploration, or in Cousteau. ( )

This story is all about Jacques Cousteau. It talks about how he has loved water since he was a child and all he has done with water as he got older, like inventing the oxygen tank that allows us to breathe underwater. It explains how he loved water so much that he wanted to become a 'mannish'. This story is very well written and I imagine kids would be captivated by it. It would be a good book to read to get students excited about the ocean. It could be used at the start of a unit on ocean life. Manfish also talks about how much Jacques cared about keeping the ocean clean, which could be another teaching point on protecting our environment. ( )