Lloyd Finds His Whalesong, a shy story about gifts and safety

Lloyd Finds His Whalesong by Skylaar Amann is an interesting illustrated book. From the moment that you pick it up the colors and illustrations make you smile. Lloyd is a young whale who is struggling to find his song amongst a pod of adult whales. If there’s no song then he can’t keep up and it’s a big ocean. Much like the tides, the book ebbs and flows, with Lloyd finding his voice, getting sidetracked by a noisy ship and hopefully finding the confidence to sing again so that he can find his people. As a children’s book it will meet the needs of whale kids or those who can focus on the art over the story.

For us, reading the book felt odd at times. It’s not that every book for children has to rhyme, they don’t. However, when they don’t rhyme they need that something extra. For whale kids, Lloyd Finds His Whalesong has that on the final two pages where readers will learn a little about noise pollution, find out if whales really do sing and play along to Lloyd’s Song, an instrumental that accompanies the book.

However, as a book Lloyd Finds His Whalesong is best served for those readers who really love whales or might be a little shy. Early in the book Lloyd does find a way to get his song across, but it’s not the traditional way that whales get the message across. Instead of singing, Lloyd finds a guitar at the bottom of the ocean and gleefully plays. He tries to play something for his pod that is up ahead of him, but his tune gets hijacked by a ship that’s blocking his musical waves.

All of the whales swim deep to escape the metal beast and Lloyd finds himself alone in the dark. He starts to play again and the band is back together.

The text is descriptive, but because it doesn’t rhyme you’ll find yourself looking at the art more than you do the words. Our 10 year-old just read the book and said, “that’s some pretty art”. He’s correct, it is some great art, but a great illustrated book is not built on great art alone. There was nothing in the words to make me care or get into the story of Lloyd, his song or his pod. As a good night book it’s serviceable, but the text is too long to read more than once and the illustrations are varied enough to point things out for more than one reading at a time.

Lloyd Finds His Whalesong is a great example of pizza and illustrated books. There really isn’t a bad one of either of them, but some of them are highly targeted towards certain folks. In this case, it’s a whale crowd, followed by a small subsection of noise pollution people. 

There is an affiliate link in this post, because, whales.