Secret Bay, The

Moonbeam Award
John Burroughs Association Riverby Award

Estuaries form where river meets sea and fresh water mixes with salt. Teeming with life, these places of salt marshes, mudflats, and tidal backwaters serve as nursery areas for oceangoing fish, migratory stopovers for shorebirds, and homes for an amazing diversity of snails, bivalves, fish, mammals, horseshoe crabs, fiddler and blue crabs, terrapin turtles, plankton, and many others, all of whom we meet in the pages of this delightful book.
Narrated in the poetic voice of the estuary itself, and accompanied by natural-history sidebars about estuary plants, animals, and cycles, The Secret Bay is another topnotch nature book from the author and illustrator of the award-winning, bestselling The Secret Pool.

Notable Features:
A stand-alone book and a stunning companion volume to Ridley and Raye’s award-winning Secret Pool.

Ridley deftly augments the estuary’s lyrical narrative voice with sidebars about the plants, animals, and natural processes of an estuary.

Raye’s gorgeous watercolors reveal new features and hidden treats with each reading.

Back matter includes The Estuary Food Web, Great Escapes (how estuary animals avoid predators), and an author’s note about the challenges facing estuaries.

A perfect book for the budding naturalist and for his or her parents and teachers.

Available wherever books are sold.
Science writer Kimberly Ridley is an award-winning author of nonfiction books for children. Her joy is sharing her love of nature and writing with children through her books and school visits. Kimberly’s picture books, The Secret Pool (Kirkus starred review) and The Secret Bay, have received honors including Riverby Awards from the John Burroughs Association for “outstanding natural history books for young people.” Her newest book is Extreme Survivors: Animals That Time Forgot. A former magazine editor, Kimberly has written for publications including The Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, and Downeast Magazine. She holds an MS in Science Journalism.

Rebekah Raye (East Blue Hill, ME) is an artist beloved for her bird and animal paintings and sculpture. In addition to the award-winning Secret Pool, her Tilbury House picture books include Thanks to the Animals (by Allen Sockabasin), Swimming Home (by Susan Hand Shetterly), and The Very Best Bed, which she wrote as well as illustrated.