Oh, the oceans they shimmer with such wondrous lives!
Our mysterious, beautiful sea
where so long, long ago, in the far distant past,
the first glimmers of life came to be.

Imagine a leisurely stroll along the beach, waves crashing on the shore, the ebb and flow calming, hypnotic, rejuvenating. Looking out at the horizon, you marvel at the crystalline water’s sweeping expanse, in awe of its magic and mystery.

Is there a nearby tide pool to explore? Will you be lucky enough to spot a starfish, baby octopus, hermit crab or sea urchin? What about colorful sea anemones, pesky barnacles, limpets, mussels or snails? This fascinating ecosystem teeming with marine life is but a microcosm of the world’s vast, ancient oceans — oceans where life on earth began billions of years ago.

With dynamic lyrical verse and breathtakingly beautiful art, Jennifer Berne and Amanda Hall tell the greatest evolutionary tale ever told in their magnificent new picture book, How the Sea Came To Be: And All the Creatures In It (Eerdmans BFYR, 2023). Their captivating account unfolds in three parts: The Birth of the Sea, The Birth of Life, and All That the Sea Came To Be . . . From Then to Now.

They first take us back some 4.5 billion years, when our very young planet was a fiery, volatile entity with molten lava exploding from within, comets and asteroids crashing down from the sky. The sizzling and simmering, bubbling and burbling continued for millions of years until the Earth finally began to ever-so-slowly cool.

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