My First Fact File Oceans

Excellent!
I think this is a great title (and series) for homeschool curriculum and for STEM learning! I love the science experiments scattered throughout the pages to aid in the learning process. Wonderful, engaging illustrations and written with the right amount of facts for children, so to not overwhelm or bore.

When engaging, descriptive, inviting written text that invites readers to learn about the world’s oceans teams up with vivid, clearly labeled, colorful illustrations, we have a winning book. Double page spreads first identify the world’s five great oceans and then introduce topics such as wind and waves, the ocean floor, coral kingdom, animal journeys, and more. Additional features include many hands-on activities that demonstrate things like waves, currents, melting ice caps, and erosion. Highly readable and well-illustrated.

I vote we have all information presented in this series style. Honestly the images are beautiful and colourful. The information is easy to understand and there is a lot of it. It is interactive and fun.

This is one of the most well done information books I have seen in a long time. I want to own this whole series for my kids.

My First Face File Oceans is a perfect book for little ones looking to learn more about a subject. My daughter is 5 and she really enjoyed the pictures and the fun facts. Lots of information without being overly wordy. I liked that there were hands-on activities scattered throughout (how to make waves in a bowl, how to make a current, etc). This book covered a lot of information in a way that young readers will find engaging!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley!
awesome kids book.
we loved the illustrations.
the story was unique & easy to read!

I received an electronic ARC from Quarto Publishing Group through NetGalley.
My First Fact Files series.
Green provides facts and information about oceans for elementary level readers.
Simple to follow text in text boxes and captions explain the headings on each spread.
Realistic illustrations support the information.
Reader activities provide further STEAM challenges.

Again by the tireless Jen Green, with consultant Diva Amon, and this time nicely illustrated by Wesley Robins, this book tackles the massive oceans that Earth is blessed with - a subject which was touched on in her excellent My First Fact File Weather book I also review today. Again this is a print book, but I got only to review the ebook representation of it.

This book is the same length as the other one - about twenty pages, each devoted to an important aspect of a very important subject. It covers an overview of the five great oceans (and no, Ocean's 8 wasn't one of them), winds and waves, currents and tides, the ocean floor on which, (I read on the BBC news website in the middle of last May), a plastic bag was found at the bottom of the Marianas trench - some 35,000 feet down. Yes, we've even polluted that. The ocean floor is constantly on the move, believe it or not, as this book makes clear. Whether that will get rid of that bag, I don't know!

But I digress! the book covers the various levels in the ocean from sunlight surface to dark depths, as well as the littoral (literally!), food chains (not fast food!), coral reefs, icy ocean environments (which would sure feel nice as hot as it's been here recently!), animal journeys (including salmon, whales, and the Arctic tern), dangerous waters, rising seas, ships and boats (a brief history), exploration, and pollution. I recently had the pleasure of an ocean cruise and gained a refreshed appreciation for the sea, which I hope will be reflected in a novel I'm currently working on, but this book, aimed at children though it is, brought all of that back to me.

Once again the book has some pretty neat experiments for young children to undertake - safe and inexpensive. There's a sink or swim project to compare fresh and saline water, there's an experiment where you can make your own current, and even one where you can make your own tsunami! Just a small one. Probably won't bring your house down. I'm guessing...! There's a couple of pages devoted to rising sea levels due to climate change - and including a nice little experiment to see how your mini-sea level rises when ice melts.

For me, it would have been nice has this clarified that floating ice - like at the North Pole - will not contribute to sea level rise because it's already in the ocean, but melting ice on land - such as that on Greenland and the Antarctic will indeed cause a major sea-level rise if it all melts. But you can't have everything. Of course not! Where would you keep it?!

Overall I really liked this book and commend it as a worthy read. I appreciated that it tells the truth, and illustrates the text well, and colorfully. It's done in ways that will engage young children and educate them, and we all need an education about the oceans, it seems.

This informational book is simply fabulous. It lays out fun facts about Oceans and the things that affect them such as habitat of sea animals, food chain and weather changes. It even includes a section on pollution and how to combat it.

This book is colorful and laid out it a fun, interesting way. Each page contains a great deal of information about things such as boats/ships, icy habitats and dangerous waters. Along with the information provided, the pages contain fun facts and experiments the reader can perform.

The illustrations are cute and comical if you look for the humor. The primary colors enhance the excitement of delving into the subject.

I highly recommend this book and the other book. My First Fact File Weather, to homes and elementary schools alike. I intend to purchase all of them and collect new ones as they are published. This will be a great addition to any library.



I received an ARC from Quarto Publishing Group – Ivy Kids through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book.

A reasonable primer for all things oceanic, that will serve pretty well in a primary school library. Pleasant double-page spreads attest to the strong design, while the text is basically an introductory paragraph, and other bit-bots, with the artwork's captions conveying many factoids. You also get ideas for perfectly kitchen-table-friendly science experiments, which will add to this volume's shelf life. Topics covered are perfectly sensible, ranging from the life in various waters (Arctic, deeper seas and coral reef), the concept of the food chain, what makes a hurricane, and more. The brevity of it all is enough to make us hopeful the closing sections on pollution and environmental awareness will not be forsaken. I do think the book was pitched rather young, however, with every spread getting a 'quick facts' box-out that was stating the obvious and rather repetitive. That aside, this series of non-fiction guides looks to be one worth consideration.

I am always on the search for kid-friendly nonfiction series. Kids love them, and a great series is harder to find than it may seem.

When looking for a great nonfiction series, one needs to find a collection that is engaging with both its topics and illustrations. In addition, there should be tons of nonfiction text features to help support the Common Core Standards of teaching nonfiction.

Finally, the readability needs to support learning, so the text must be written utilizing scientific or historical language that students should be learning as they read along with these nonfiction texts.

My First Fact Files is a new nonfiction series that I have come across, and I love it. This series is fantastic!

It checks every one of my boxes for a great nonfiction series. The topics are engaging, the illustrations are stunning, the books are packed with text features, and scientific/historical language is utilized on every page of these texts.

So far, I have had the opportunity to read three texts from this series: My First Fact Files: Weather, My First Fact Files: Oceans, and My First Fact Files: The Vikings. Each one of these books was great on its own. But as a collection, they are a total wow!

What surprised me the most about this series is that every one of these books was written by a different author. However, the cohesion between the structure and design of these books are flawless. Anyone will clearly be able to tell that they belong together in a series, and I highly doubt most readers will even notice that all the books were written by different authors.

The readability of this series is deeper than what I would have predicted based on the cover designs of the story. Before I dug into reading these books, my guess was that this series was designed for younger elementary students.

When I opened the texts up, I was surprised to see that there was a ton of text and nonfiction depth on every page. I would recommend this series for middle to upper elementary readers. I teach 4th grade, and this book would be a great fit for many of my readers.

This is an excellent addition to the series. Full of facts, information that is required for geography in schools and presented in a was that will feel like it’s too fun to be learning.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.


This book is clearly organised, very engaging to look at and has an excellent balance of text to illustrations. The text s broken up and laid out in an easy to follow way. The information does not feel too wordy (which often leads to students becoming disinterested) and the use of 'Quick Facts' boxes makes it easy to find snippets of information.
I'll be recommending this to my colleagues who teach ocean topics as well as adding it to our library,

My First Fact File Oceans is part of a series of short fact and exercise books aimed at younger children (K-2+). Released 23rd July 2019 by Quarto on their Ivy Kids imprint, it's 48 pages and available in paperback format.

Very well done book, and an interesting and worthwhile series. I've been touting STE(A)M education for decades. This book is engaging and colorful. Facts are presented in context with color gouache paintings on each double page. Relevant information is presented in sidebars. The included STEAM activities are also presented in sidebars at the bottom of the pages. Possibly worth noting, the book uses British spellings: 'mould', 'washing up', etc. The instances are few, and clear in context, so it's not a problem, but probably worthy of comment in a review.

Chapters are short and cover ocean geography, oceanography, different habitats, exploration, food chains, ecology, conservation, and much more. The art style is unpretentious and appealing (see cover).

This would make a great bedtime read or a reading circle or classroom read for young readers, and the series would be great as a part of the homeschool library. There's a short alphabetical glossary included at the end.

Five stars.

Another engaging book from the "My First Fact File' series! I've read a few of these and love all of them - I will definitely be using them in my homeschool curriculum with my children. Lots of information, pictures, and hands-on activities is sure to make this book a favorite of curious kids!

This was full of interesting facts about oceans. I learned a lot. Thanks for the review copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book is a great addition to the My First Fact File series! It’s informative, the language is simple, and the illustrations are adorable. I’m sure kids will love it!

This whole series is fantastic. My child was sucked in b all the information as well as the pictures. Loved it


I received this book for free in exchange for my honest review.

A fun look at oceans, with good explanations of how the ocean works. The pictures explain things clearly and I love the inclusion of at-home experiments that people can try to see how things work for themselves.

I was gratified to see the discussion about climate change included. I am confused about why the person in the 10,000 years ago dugout boat is so pasty looking instead of brown-skinned. And then we get into sea exploration and "famous" Christopher Columbus, which would probably be better avoided if one isn't able to discuss the issues with the explorers. I think that it would be better to put the plastic pollution box larger, especially if you're going to say that we make plastic from oil from the ocean. That could get confusing very quickly. And I think the "waste harms coral reefs" is not a strong enough sentence - "waste kills coral reefs" would be more clear and honest. Kids are the ones who are going to be making decisions about how to act environmentally in the future, so they need to know the truth now.

One quibble that did not take away from my enjoyment of the story, but which I do want to bring up: "Fish, seals, and whales have smooth, streamlined bodies shaped like torpedoes." Shouldn't it be "Fish, seals, and whales have smooth, streamlined bodies and we shaped torpedoes like them"? Because really, which came first. Also, I don't really expose my kid to war and violence anyway - she's three and I'd read a book about oceans with her but she doesn't need to know what a torpedo is. It's something we're so accustomed to using as an analogy that we don't really think about it, but I think we should.

Thank you Quatro Publishing and Netgalley for this ARC.

This is a great, brightly coloured, information packed book, and it came at perfect timing for my 7 year old who is studying the oceans at school. This book was a great resource and source of conversation for the school project.

Out of all the fact files, this one is my favorite because it's about the ocean! The book focuses on the ocean geography in the beginning while the other half talks about human activity involving the ocean. I definitely recommend this the most since at the end of the book, it talks about pollution and how to reduce it so I think it's a very good starting point for children to start learning about how to protect and save the environment. The only thing I didn't like is that the tips for this fact file was just a repetition of the summary in each chapter.

I've read each of these fact files before posting the reviews and since they're technically almost the same books, though just with different topics, my reviews may be similar to each other.

What I liked about these fact files was that they were short and to the point. The art is simple but childishly cute and it was nice that they covered the whole page. There are tips and also activities mentioned in some pages.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with the digital copy for an honest review.


*Also Kate seems to have forgotten to remove her instructions from the digital copy.* 😉

Get yourselves a physical copy and then enjoy with your kid. Colourful and factfull you will have a blast with this wonderful book.

Special thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for this review copy.

This is a beautiful elementary STEM book about oceans. I enjoyed it, and I think that younger students will, too!

Well-organized, informative and beautifully illustrated, My first Fact file Oceans is another great title in this fabulous series. The book covers a wide array of topics related to oceans: geography, exploration, various sea animal habitats, the concept of food chain, weather, and last but not least, the issue of plastic pollution. The information is accessible and supported by colourful illustrations and fun experiments to make learning more memorable.
A beautiful, child-friendly non-fiction book that would make a great addition to any home or school library.
Thank you to NetGalley and Ivy Kids (Quarto Publishing Group) for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

I chose this book for my 8 year-old daughter. She thoroughly enjoyed this book. She found the facts interesting and the illustrations were really good, even on an iPad. We enjoyed it so much that we purchased the book in paper form and have added it to our educational books for home-education.