Dive! The Story of Breathing Underwater
CCBC Review:
The history of human effort to breathe underwater across millennia opens with a description of ancient Greek sponge divers holding heavy stones to help them sink rapidly. They also learned to breathe through hollow reeds when near the water’s surface. Aristotle described a diving bell around 400 B.C., and innovations over the next thousand years improved the air flow in and out of the bell. In the 18th and 19th centuries, compressed air allowed workers to spend more time inside, but returning to the surface often caused painful cases of the bends, or decompression sickness. Later individual diving bells of a helmetlike construction evolved into a closed-circuit system using a portable oxygen tank called a rebreather. In 1934, inventors of the bathysphere set new records for depth diving, and in the following decade Jacques Cousteau and Émile Gagnan created the aqua-lung. More recent vessels, like small submarine submersibles, able to explore surfaces and shipwrecks far below the ocean’s surface. The contemporary multiracial family introduced on the opening end papers sorting through diving gear at home in what looks like an upcoming trip to Greece, reappear in illustrations throughout the book, and then can be seen prepping photography equipment on the closing papers as they ready for a Kenyan safari. ©2025 Cooperative Children’s Book Center
Illustrated by Chris Gall
CCBC Age Recommendation: Ages 5-10
Age Range:
PreK-Early Elementary (Ages 4-7)
Grades 3-5 (Ages 8-10)
Format:
Picture book
Subjects:
Exploration
Inventing and Inventors
Publisher:
Roaring Brook
Publish Year: 2024
Pages: 40
ISBN: 9781250823953
CCBC Location: Non-Fiction, 797 Gall