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Gaia Girls: Way of Water
Lee Welles
Illustrated by Carol Coogan
Fiction (Series)
Ages 9 to 12
Daisyworld Press, 2007, 978-1-933609-02-7
  Miho still cannot believe all that has happened in just a short period of time. Not long ago she was sailing the world’s oceans with her parents, listening to the songs of the whales which her mother had recorded and looking at the beautiful photographs that her father took of the ocean. Now both her parents had been claimed by the ocean which they loved so much and Miho is now on her way to Japan to live with an uncle she had never met.
  Ojisan is nothing like Miho’s mother and Miho does not know how she will survive living in her uncle’s tiny cigarette smoke filled apartment. Then he takes her to the family home down by the coast and Miho feels as if life is worth living again. Here she can see and hear the ocean once more. And here she meets a talking otter who calls herself Gaia. It would appear that the otter is none other than Mother Earth herself and she needs Miho’s help. She begins to teach Miho the way of the ocean, letting her hear its songs and feel its pulse. Gaia lets Miho get close to and become friends with a pod of dolphins. In fact Miho soon learns how to communicate with the dolphins. Their joys, fears, and troubles become her own. Through them she beings to see how much Gaia is threatened and how much Gaia needs her help.
  In this remarkable book we watch as Miho comes to accept the loss of her parents and we also watch in awe as she develops her powers and comes to terms with her new place in the world. She now has a new family, a very large family which desperately needs her and which she is going to have to defend as best she can in the years to come, using her wits and her new found abilities.
  Beautifully and often lyrically written, this second book in the Gaia Girls series will leave readers wondering what Miho will do next. The environmental message is carefully woven into the body of the story and the concept of Gaia is credible, tangible, and very moving. There is no doubt that readers of this book will be left thinking very hard about their place in this world and what their role in their Gaia might be.
 
 

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