Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man

Burt Dow is a retired deep-water man who keeps two boats (one houses geraniums). One day, he takes his other boat out to sea to fish. He accidentally hooks the tale of whale, and an incredible adventure ensues! I love how McCloskey entwines tangible reality of boats and the ocean with imaginative scenarios like a whale wanting a bandaid. Burt Dow serves as a comedic “straight man” that balances the whimsy of the rest of this charming story.

A little long for the Make Way for Ducklings fans, but terrific for young schoolchildren.

The language is full of rhythm, repetition, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and other clever tricks to make it lively and funny. The art is fantastic, (in the classic tradition" as Burt's narrator would say) with full-color details of Burt and his boat & gull, and iconographic whales in a variety of colors. The design is also special, in that some pages are cliff-hangers, and the text gets interrupted, without even a comma, at the page break.

I love the details, like the sources of the different colors on Burt's boat, and impatient sister Leela, and the particular kinds of paints and debris used to tickle the whale's stomach, and the particular kind of show more band-aid.

Oh I wish I'd known about this when my boys were little. If you've not read it yet, and you like picture-books or tall tales, make haste to find a copy in your library system and check it out to preserve it from getting culled for lack of circulation." show less

The downeast accent McCloskey gives to his main character is the best element in the book. The illustrations are wonderful, the humor is great, but Burt's speech makes it. Being a New Englander myself, I always had to do "the voice" when I'd read it to my son when he was small. The book never gets old. One of McCloskey's best.

A Maine fisherman has an adventure involving a leaky boat and a journey into the belly of a whale and out again in a most creative fashion. An all-time family favorite for read-alouds. Superb story, characterization, and dialogue. Lots of fun and surprises.

A rollicking good tale with plenty of sound words. Even though this book was written in the early 60s, it is still enjoyable to children today. It flows, and bounces and rocks! A crusty old "salt" proves to be sympathetic and understanding to the animals around him. A tender-hearted tail.

One of my all time favorite picture books -- the story of Burt Dow who accidentally hooks a whale, repairs its tail, rides out a storm in its tummy, escapes through his own ingenuity, and then must adorn the tails of an entire fleet (pod?) of whales with bandaids is delightful and the pictures are terrific. My children love this story as much as I did growing up.

This is a sea story written in a classical way. It is the story of a man and his seagull friend who go fishing. He catches the tail of a whale on his fish hook. He carefully removes the hook and gives the whale a bandaid. When a storm begins to come his way, he tells the whale to swallow him. The whale swallows him but he is worried the whale will not spit him out. He throws paint and oil and all sorts of things to give the whale a tummy ache so it will spit him out. When he is spit out of the whale he realizes he is surrounded by whales. Then he thinks really hard and realizes they all want bandaids! GENRE: fantasy. USES: helping one another, look at the use of vocabulary. MEDIA: acrylics? CRITIQUE: I think is is a funny story full of show more creativity. However, the whole story is written in almost an old fashioned, Irish style. It uses lots of different vocabulary and could be challenging for younger grades. show less