Seashore

EDITORIAL REVIEWS
Follow up to the award-winning Eyewitness Video series.

The seashore is simply the meeting place of the land and the sea. It sounds serene, but Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness Video: Seashore shows us this inter-tidal zone (the area between high and low tide) can be a hostile and often unforgiving place to live for many of the creatures and plant life that inhabits it. Many years ago, people believed that the moon goddess of Diana, represented in the zodiac by the symbol of a crab, controlled the ebb and flow of the tides. Ironically, the crab is one of the few creatures that can move freely throughout the inter-tidal zone. This thirty-five minute video details the dangers of life along the seashore, some immediate (the lowering of the tide often exposes creatures to prey) to the long term (plant life in the spray or splash-zone has to rely on rain flow for its fresh water needs) . We also learn that the constant crashing waves (some 8,000 a day hit the Pacific coastline) are continually re-sculpting the shoreline in both subtle and dramatic ways, while working non-stop as a grinding machine to crumble rocks into sand. Also in this exciting video, the history of our use of the seashore as a place for recreation is discussed, as is the building of the first lighthouse and the thriving ecosystem known as tide pools. As with all the videos in the Eyewitness series, Seashore colorfully answers all the questions it raises and will pique children's curiosity, so that they look at the seashore with a whole new appreciation and are inspired to learn more about where the land meets the sea.



REVIEW
a high tech whiz-bang ... that looks unlike any other ... -- USA Today

an eye-popping odyssey ... -- New York Newsday

visually stunning ... -- Los Angeles Times